Dear customers and friends!
New year brings us new hopes and new plans. The year 2021 was successful for CGS Labs with some highlights, like releasing CGS Labs Civil Solutions 2022, organizing CGS Labs InfraChallenge event for students, opening the new office in the Czech Republic, adding new reseller partners in Greece, Sweden, Estonia, Portugal, and Kosovo. And of course, bringing many new customers on board, who are increasingly expressing their satisfaction about our civil engineering software products and services. The recent survey shows that our customers especially appreciate our fast response and excellent technical support. Nonetheless, we strive to improve our services in 2022 and become even better.
BIM is remaining our focus area in development activities. As many countries introduce their BIM mandates (for example in Slovenia BIM for public projects will be mandatory from the year 2025), we accelerate our efforts in developing efficient software tools for creating 3D models and attaching BIM data to them. We are carefully tracking IFC format development at buildingSMART International and integrating it into our solutions. At the same time, we maintain some older exchange formats like LandXML, OKSTRA and REB.
In this newsletter we keep you informed of our latest news and insights about the CGS Labs InfraChallenge competition for students, our stories of success and achievements in the railway design field, we reveal our trust in partnership with Bricsys and we present six newly joined reseller partners.
What we have been missing in the year 2021 is more live interaction with you, our dear customers and partners. There were very few occasions for it, however, we remain hopeful and optimistic that the year 2022 is bringing less online and more live communication. More about our plans for the year 2022 in our next newsletter.
Thank you for being with us!
Matjža Šajn, Dipl.Ing.
CGS Labs CEO
CGS Labs Infrachallenge 2021
Who won the prize for the best project?
End of November 2021, we rounded up our 2nd CGS Labs Infra Challenge, an international student competition in the field of civil engineering, aimed to connect constructions students and the design industry.
“ Digitalization of the civil engineering industry remains our developmental focus. With CGS Labs Infra Challenge competition we want to encourage students to explore the possibilities of our software solutions and thus help solve the infrastructure engineering challenges. ”
— Matjaž Šajn, Managing Director at CGS Labs
As part of the competition, senior students of civil engineering presented their civil engineering projects that were designed using CGS Labs software Plateia, Ferrovia or Aquaterra.
The closing event, CGS Labs InfraChallenge 2021, took place online on November 23rd. Out of 15 registered competing groups and individuals, the organizing committee selected 5 finalists. Among those the audience then voted for three winners, who received prizes worth from 1,000 to 400 EUR.
Ankica Malić
1st prize winner
Jasna Begić
2nd prize winner
Amar Čorbo
3rd prize winner
To make the competition more attractive, to encourage and support our future civil engineers, we have reached out to several civil engineering faculties, domestic and foreign, and invited civil engineering companies to cooperate. As many as eleven companies financially supported the competition and in this way contributed to making the event so successful. Thank you very much for that.
" New BIM technologies are so exciting! We want to share our passion with young generations of students through software donations and cooperation with the universities. "
— Matjaž Šajn, Managing Director at CGS Labs
We are very pleased to have once more created a common space of support, learning, networking and to have successfully connected students and the already established experts.
View recording of the online event
State border railway line sectionNovi Sad – Subotica
Institute of Transportation CIP from Belgrade, Serbia used CGS Labs software FERROVIA to design a state border railway line section Novi Sad – Subotica.
The length of the modernized railway line, from Belgrade Centre station to the state border with Hungary is about 183 km. The railway line is split into three characteristics sections: Belgrade Centre – Stara Pazova, 34,4 km, Stara Pazova – Novi Sad, 40,4 km and Novi Sad – Subotica – State Border (Kelebia), 108 km.
CGS Labs software FERROVIA was used for the preliminary design and Feasibility Study on the project section of the railway: Novi Sad – Subotica – State border (Kelebia). FERROVIA was used to prepare preliminary railway designs as well as detailed designs and project documentation.
BIM is the key to successful railway projects
Railway infrastructure is a complex and multi-disciplinary engineering system that must be planned very carefully and consistently. In general, the characteristic cross-section covers the steel rails that are installed on sleepers, set in ballast. In addition, there are also many drainage elements along the railway line, as well as signal safety and telecommunication devices. Due to the design and technical elements, the railway often passes through many bridges, tunnels, portals and other demanding structures. Because of all these facilities, railway projects are very difficult, therefore it is necessary to use BIM in designing, planning, building and maintenance.
Recently, we set out a demo project to test the capabilities of the Ferrovia software. We created a BIM model of a double-track railway line that runs under a concrete bridge. The model also includes a noise barrier, masts and signal safety devices. The results will help us in further development, where we will also place great emphasis on supporting IFC Rail.
CGS Labs partnership with Hegaxon / Bricsys
Many users think about AutoCAD as being a “Mercedes” CAD system, not knowing that BricsCAD is not a “KIA” replacement, but a serious competitor to Autodesk AutoCAD. Please accept our apologies for such a comparison, all respect to Mercedes and KIA, we just wanted to illustrate a way of typical thinking.
The story about CAD platforms is as old as our company and its products. 30 years ago, AutoCAD and Microstation were the only serious competitors, while through the years many other CAD options developed, many of them based on Intellicad, a very interesting story about the very first AutoCAD clone. More about it on some other occasion. BricsCAD took our special attention 10 years ago, after finding out, that many of our German customers wanted to replace AutoCAD for BricsCAD. The fact that BricsCAD was one of the very few European DWG compatible CAD products, drove us to take a closer look at it in the year 2012, to evaluate it, and to make first contacts with the Bricsys team headquartered in Ghent, Belgium. Looking back, we can confirm that it was a good decision to support BricsCAD as a second CAD platform besides Autodesk AutoCAD and Civil 3D. With the recent merger of Bricsys and Hexagon, BricsCAD even got new momentum and acceleration. Today BricsCAD seems to be the fastest-growing DWG-compatible CAD platform.
As it becomes obvious that Bricsys is heavily investing in BricsCAD development and Autodesk is more or less maintaining its AutoCAD, we are confident that BricsCAD will become the recommended platform for CGS Labs products in a very short time. We appreciate Bricsys’ invitation to closely cooperate with us as an applications development partner, where our suggestions for further Bricsys development are seriously considered. Also, our cooperation in the sales and marketing field is bringing first results. In the year 2021, we have organized together Autopath webinars for BricsCAD users. CGS Labs company and products were also highlighted at the Bricsys Conference in October 2021, with examples of projects being completed with CGS Labs products on top of the BricCAD platform.
Another field of cooperation is our engagement with Bricsys reseller network. Many of the BricsCAD resellers are becoming also CGS Labs software resellers, as we have a common goal to bring the best possible civil engineering solutions to the market, which is ready for the change. And as we know, changes are necessary to find out the way for improvements and success.
Record growth of CGS Labs partners network
It is good news that the CGS Labs partners network is growing faster than ever before! In the year 2021, we signed agreements with five new companies to represent CGS Labs products. We are happy that engineers and designers in Estonia, Greece, Kosovo & Albania, Portugal & Spain, and Sweden now have direct access to our products through their local representatives.
In Estonia, we agreed on cooperation with the company ARUCAD. As the country ranks high in digitalization, BIM plays an important role in civil engineering. Our product Autosign has been recognized as an excellent solution for 3D BIM traffic signs design.
In Greece, company EVERGROS is reselling Autopath and Plateia. EVERGROS is a design company, which already uses CGS Labs products on its infrastructure projects. Engineers are amazed at how easy-to-use our products are.
In Kosovo and Albania, the company City Computer is promoting all CGS Labs products. Plateia has been a well-known road design software in the region for a long time. Now with City Computer, we plan to reactivate our activities and upgrade existing licenses on the market.
In Portugal and Spain, the company LeanOp Unipessoal is selling Autopath to their existing clients in the field of infrastructure and industry. They see Autopath as an efficient and easy-to-use solution for tracking vehicles movements in various environments.
After working for several years with the company SYMETRY in Sweden, we are now building a new business relationship with the company PROCAD SYSTEMS. CGS Labs products Autopath and Autosign have been used in Scandinavia for a decade. Among users are well-known companies, such as WSP, MARKCON, SWECO, ATKINS, RAMBOLL, PÖYRY, COWI, and many others.
Check most recent BLOG posts
All CGS Labs Software now have a common blog landing page https://cgs-labs.com/cgs-blog/ where you can easily filter by-product the content of your interest.
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