Graebert Announces Wave of Dassault DraftSight Plugins for Cross-Platform CAD Tool and Developer World Tour

Berlin, Germany based Graebert GmbH, the pioneer in developing high-performance CAD solutions across desktop and mobile devices, this week announced at its Graebert Annual Meeting more than 20 plugins to customize the industry leading DraftSight 2D CAD solution, co-developed by Dassault Systèmes (of France) and Graebert. Dassault DraftSight is a cross-platform (Windows and Mac OS X) 2D DWG based CAD system with nearly 3 million active users worldwide.

New Plugins for DraftSight

The new Graebert plugins add a wide range of industry-specific functionality to DraftSight and include:

• G-Electrical for Electrical CAD
• TopoPoint for import and export of topographic point data
• CAD Blocks, a range of smart block libraries for DraftSight

While DraftSight also supports plugins developed in LISP or via a COM interface, the DraftSight™ API is a modern C++ development library that has been specifically developed for the program. One of its unique advantages is forward-compatibility, meaning that plugins created for one version of DraftSight will be supported by future versions.

01 – Esri plugin allows the importation of Esri GIS data maps into DraftSight (also available for ARES Commander).

The Graebert plugins introduced at the Graebert Annual Meeting take full advantage of DraftSight for maximum performance and functionality.

DraftSight Developers World Tour

Graebert also announced (in collaboration with Dassault Systèmes) a new DraftSight Developers World Tour to introduce the DraftSight API, increase the catalog of Plugins for DraftSight and engage with developers. This World Tour will also offer developers a unique opportunity to become introduced to the DraftSight API with a series of free workshops.

The first event on the Tour has already taken place at the Graebert Annual Meeting in Berlin and further dates will be scheduled in Paris, Boston, Phoenix (SolidWorks World 2015) and Bangkok. Visit www.graebert.com/draftsight and follow @DS_Plugins on Twitter or Graebert Plugins for DraftSight on Facebook to be kept abreast of details and register interest in attending the Tour.

Architosh Analysis

Dassault DraftSight is a free DWG based 2D CAD system, seemingly purposely built by Dassault Systèmes to wage a CAD war against its US-based MCAD foe in Autodesk. It comes at a substantial cost savings compared to both AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT due to the fact that it has a free version and a pro version that is subscription-based. DraftSight is also Windows and Mac OS X cross-platform, but so is AutoCAD itself now. And even AutoCAD LT ships in OS X version too. As does AutoCAD 360.

Still, some companies are finding benefits in DraftSight and in unusual ways. One such company is Japanese AEC giant Obayashi Corporation, which we have written about earlier in the year when Architosh was in Japan for the Graphisoft BIM Cloud announcement. Obayashi Corporation is a massive company, one of the top 5 largest construction companies in Japan and one of the largest in the world.

Obayashi Corp moved to an aggressive BIM adoption plan based around Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD system but in order to ween their staff off their legacy 2D CAD system, which some staff were resisting due to dependencies, the whole company switched to DraftSight. They also did so for cost reasons, by re-allocating IT funds saved (which would have gone to the existing 2D CAD) towards new BIM software. It’s an interesting study and you can read more here.