Germany’s Graebert Announces ARES Commander 2016—CAD System for Mac, Windows and Linux

Berlin, Germany-based Graebert GmbH, a pioneer in developing high-performance CAD (computer-aided design) solutions across desktop and mobile devices, today announced the immediate availability of ARES Commander 2016.

The 2D and 3D CAD package is a fully compatible DWG-based CAD system offering industry-leading AutoCAD DWG file compatibility.

Like it’s predecessors, ARES Commander 2016 is available in 14 languages across all three desktop operating systems: Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Linux.

Graebert represents a leading alternative for DWG file-based CAD software and company touts their unmatched expertise in customizing its platform to the meet specific partner needs. Graebert-developed CAD technologies are in daily use by more than 8 million design and engineering professionals in more than 100 countries through not just ARES Commander, but also through their OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partner solutions such as Dassault Systemes’ DraftSight®, CorelCAD™ and Onshape™.

New Features in ARES Commander 2016

The following are some key new features of ARES Commander 2016.

• Quick Input — provides new command entry interface near the cursor (pointer) with tooltips, input boxes, and construction lines
• Annotation Scaling — adjusts the size and scale of dimensions, texts, hatches and blocks to the scale of each viewport in paper space layouts
• Heads-up Toolbar — a new heads-up display UI palette toolbar appears when you select entities and lets you zoom to the selected entities, change the entity Layer, LineStyle, and LineWidth, dimension entities, or create a Block from the entities
• Dimension location snap — forces the dimension lines to be placed at specified distances from measured linear entities and between successive dimension lines or at specified angles for radial and diameter dimensions
• DGN Import — the ImportDGN command inserts content from DGN files (V7 or V8) as a block in your drawing. The .dgn (DGN) file format is popular among users of Microstation® and some other CAD software. DGN import offers you a higher interoperability with other CAD professionals
• LayerState Manager — the new LayerState Manager lets you create and name different scenarios (combinations of layers and their individual states) for your layers to easily switch between them. You may for example, hide some layers and change their color to show different aspects of the same project

These are some of the higher level updates in ARES Commander 2016, the latest annual release from Graebert for the coming year. Other features can be found online.

Licensing and Special Offers

ARES Commander 2016 can be licensed in either perpetual or as an Annual Plan (12 month license). All licenses include a 12 month Graebert subscription for updates and access to a tech-support hotline. Users can freely decide to renew their license even after it expires, providing users with flexibility.

01 – Graebert’s ARES Commander 2016 is now available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, making it the most available DWG-based CAD system in the world. The product is also on Android tablets.

Any license of ARES Commander also includes a 12 month license of the mobile CAD solution, ARES Touch that is automatically renewed when the user is renewing the Graebert subscription. ARES Touch will continue operating after 12 months even when the subscription is not renewed, but with limited features.

Special Holiday Discount

To commemorate the launch of the all new version, Graebert is offering 50 percent off on its e-store. This offer will be valid until 18 December 2015, with the order code CYBER50.

About Graebert

Graebert‘s product portfolio is anchored by ARES Commander – a powerful, DWG-based CAD software with 2D and 3D modeling capabilities – which also enables developers to create standalone CAD applications. Overall, more than 8 million professionals use their CAD technologies in more than 100 countries.

MORE: Graebert Annual Meeting—ARES Breaks Down Walls in CAD

They also specialize in building surveying software and services. The SiteMaster™ line of “as built” surveying solutions, as well as worldwide surveying services are included under Graebert’s iSurvey™ brand and division.

Architosh Analysis

Architosh was in attendance in Berlin at Graebert’s Annual Meeting back in October of this year and got a preview of the new features and technology in version 2016. While the updates are all impressive and sound, the truly exciting Graebert news is just around the corner in 2016 where we see the company exploding in its influence as its technology takes shape in solutions in the cloud like via OEM partner, Onshape.

Additionally, its own ARES Kudo cloud solution looks equally exciting as does its ARES for iOS, which is targeted for 2016. All these items will make 2016 quite exciting for this Berlin-based CAD company.

02 – Microstation DGN files are importable into ARES Commander 2016 on all platforms, including Mac.

The market for DWG-based CAD systems is alive and well, despite the evolution of 3D CAD. BIM and PLM may be the new acronyms and abbreviations in AEC and manufacturing, respectively, but fundamental CAD drawing will remain for decades longer. While Autodesk’s AutoCAD is Graebert’s primary competition, the company has stern competition in the “alternative DWG CAD” market with a notable foe in Briscad. At the moment we are reviewing ARES Commander 2016 on the Mac and look forward to publishing that full review.

There are interesting pros and cons to ARES Commander versus its competitors and prime competition in AutoCAD. Other than the massive price advantage, ARES 2016 supports DGN (Microstation) files support (import) on the Mac version of ARES, for example. From our previous reviews of AutoCAD for Mac, this was a “con” item we noted, as Mac-based design professionals need to work with Microstation files popular with some civils and landscape architects. There are many other interesting comparisons and we’ll touch on more in our upcoming review of ARES 2016.