Think3 Italy Releases ThinkDesign 2011.1

This news is a little belated. In a press release issued late last month, the Italian Think3 took the 2011.1 version of its ThinkDesign Suite out of beta and officially released it. The press release mentions a list of improvements and new features. I found this paragraph quite interesting:

“The new Subdivision Solid tool represents not only a new command but also a new approach to the free-shape modeling. Through a net of control point and handles, designers can produce complex final shapes, starting from much simpler shapes, by deforming them freely in the space. It is possible to deform, add, delete and divide the faces belonging to the solid by keeping the perfect continuity and consistency of the solid. For example it is possible to get the shape of a tap starting from a simple cube.”

It has been a while since I visited the think3.eu web site and I was quite fascinated to see this picture on it.

The company profile page mentions an “international R&D team working at sites in Italy, France and India“.

On its part Versata still runs the think3 site as a sub-domain as http://think3.versata.com and continues to use the think3 logo. However, the the odd thing about that sub-domain site is that the Italian version at http://think3.versata.com/it sports a very different logo with the name SmartForm on it.

I get the feeling that Versata is using the name SmartForm on their Italian site to keep Italian courts happy. Or something like that. The sub-domain site is in Italian but I did find one page in English that mentioned the release of ThinkDesign and ThinkPLM version 2011.6. Either way this is all very twisted and bizarre.

For example, the American, German, French and Japanese versions of the contact page have the company as “think3 Division of Versata”

But then the Italian version of the same page ridiculously shows the company as “SmartForm Division of Versata”.

Looks like the someone did a find-and-replace “think3” with “SmartForm” on the Italian site. Either that or “think3” means “SmartForm” in Italian. 😉

Meahwhile this letter from Austic Scee, the General Manager of think3/SmartForm division of Versata invites customers to upgrade their base packages to high-end packeges or “purchase our Windows-based PLM system at up to 80% discounts“.