Berlin CAD Event: Graebert announces first ‘full-featured’ DWG-based CAD software for Apple iPad and iPhone

Graebert™ GmbH of Berlin, Germany, a pioneer in the global CAD industry, has announced today at its Annual Meeting ARES® Touch for Apple iOS, a professional CAD (computer-aided design) solution to create and modify DWG drawings on Apple iPhone and iPad.

A Full-Featured DWG-based CAD on iOS

Already available for Android since the end of last year, ARES Touch is currently sold in a bundle with ARES Commander, Graebert’s CAD software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is part of what the company calls its “Cross-device CAD Experience,” enabling its users to utilize their licenses on different computers, smartphones or tablets. ARES Touch is the natural extension of ARES Commander to access and edit DWG drawings on the go. Both solutions are sold together, when you buy ARES Commander you get one year of ARES Touch at no additional cost.

Covering 96 Percent of the Mobile Market

Cedric Desbordes, Sales & Marketing Executive for Graebert commented: “iPads or iPhones are popular among professionals and ARES Commander is already available for Mac OS X. Graebert is therefore very excited to extend the ARES Touch availability to the iOS platform. Mobile devices running on Android and iOS represent nearly 96 percent of the total market for devices estimated to be shipping for calendar year 2015.

Mobile device makers like Apple are aggressively targeting and penetrating the professional and enterprise markets with new 2-in-1 devices like the Apple iPad Pro. According to Graebert’s market data in Japan, where ARES Commander is strong and rising, the Japanese construction industry is essentially standardizing on iPad for a tablet architecture. At a press-only event in Berlin on Tuesday night this week, Dr. Robert Graebert, Chief Technology Officer of Graebert, told this author that their Japanese customers were a key driver in pushing for ARES Touch on iOS.

01 – iPad version is still under development, the user interface shown will still change much.

Additionally Apple’s enterprise push is further aiding the acceleration of adoption factors. “Apple has entered into a global partnership with IBM to develop iPad sales,”Desbordes said, “and we are already seeing strong interest for CAD solutions on iPad from our larger accounts in Asia.”

Larger Smartphone Screens and Apple in Enterprise

Smartphones and tablets see a growing trend for large screens and powerful hardware, which opens a strong potential for professional solutions. IDC estimates that “phablets,” ie. smartphones with 5″ screens or larger, will represent 71 percent of the smartphone market by 2019.

Although iPads currently represent about 25 percent of the market for tablets or 2-in-1 devices, they clearly lead the sales in enterprise with 81 percent activations in Q1, 2015 data according to the Good Technology Mobility Report. The market share for tablets with 10 inch screens or larger, such as the new iPad Pro, is expected to grow from 18.6 percent in 2014 to 39.5 percent in 2019. IDC expects Apple will sell early 62 million iPads  and 270 million iPhones per year by 2019.

ARES Touch offers many unique features

Besides a full-featured set of CAD tools to create or modify DWG drawings, ARES Touch offers a unique environment for developers. ARES Touch is sharing the same API as ARES Commander on Windows, Mac and Linux. As a result, ARES Touch offers an easy path for developers willing to migrate their applications to mobile. Developers can use their code writtenin C++, Lisp or DCL and build powerful mobile applications for Android and iOS on top of ARES Touch. The same code can further be used for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions of ARES Commander.

Both ARES Commander and ARES Touch are available as stand-alone retail products and OEM platforms. As a result, developers can get custom versions optimized for their specific requirements and build a full ecosystem across desktop and mobile with the same core source code.

ARES Touch’s Android version ships with ARES Commander since November 2014. Users purchasing ARES Commander for their PC on Windows, Mac or Linux received a free invitation to use ARES Touch on Android. ARES Touch will be further released in the Google Play store in the coming months. A free trial and more information can be found from www.graebert.com/arestouch. After the free trial expires, the users can either buy and activate a license or keep using a limited version for free. The iOS version will be launched later in 2016. The official release date will be announced by Graebert in November, at the occasion of its Japanese OEM partner event in Tokyo, Japan.

About Graebert

Graebert is a leading developer of CAD software, solutions and services. They are recognized as a true innovator in the CAD industry and have more than 30 years of expertise. Their DWG-based CAD systems were the first to run on Windows®, Mac® and Linux®.