AGS is a not for profit trade .org of jewelers and suppliers committed to ethics and educational standards. They also run a respected independent diamond grading lab, half owned by the not for profit and a group of investor members –Peter Yantzer is its CEO. I first met Peter at the Vegas fair in 1999, at the start of my global crusade to improve the cut quality of diamonds. I took an adversarial position with Peter; I did not like their grading system that included some so-so looking so called 'Ideal Cuts'. At that time my new Russian friends & I were lonely voices. Peter was amazingly patient with me, he agreed that their system was not 'ideal' (pun) and that as soon as he could develop a better system he would. I am pleased to say that the system they launched in Vegas does now guarantee a superior diamond. I am flattered that the system was developed with the same process steps that I used to develop HCA (the Holloway Cut Adviser).

AGS used my Russian associates ray tracing and diamond modeling software DiamCalc™ to generate Angular Spectrum Analysis Tool (ASET) images which they produced in sets in grids to identify the optimum proportions for round and princess cut diamonds. Then they did analysis of those proportion sets with ray tracing software like DiamCalc that they developed, but all the images for the charts are from DiamCalc; their in house ray tracing software does not produce good detailed images.

ASET comes in 2 forms, the desk top seen here with the DiamCalc charts of ASET images on the left, and the hand held that I had a hand in, in the central photo. The 2 stones shown here are a poorly cut and well cut stone that I snapped with my little Canon thru the hand held scope.