The company behind BRICSCAD, is hosting its annual developer and user conference in Munich, Germany, next week. It is one of two major rivals to Autodesk’s hegemony in the DWG-based CAD industry and offers a strong competitive option to AutoCAD.
While Architosh is attending Graebert’s Annual Meeting event this week in Berlin, we will catching up with news from the BRICSCAD event remotely next week from Hungary.
Why Is DWG A Big Deal?
For veteran Architosh readers many may be wondering why DWG-based CAD systems are a big deal. For years and years—back when many Mac-based CAD users clamored for the return of a native AutoCAD on Mac—many observers said that the future of CAD in AEC in particular was to be found in pure BIM software. And for MCAD players, the future was in PLM tools and systems like SolidWorks.
01 – Bricsys 2016 is happening next week, one week after Graebert’s Annual event, as the two leading DWG competitors bring their developers together in Germany in back to back weeks.
But DWG never went away. And Mac CAD users got their native AutoCAD for Mac. Meanwhile, a group of major competitors to Autodesk began developing highly capable AutoCAD clones, as some call them. These two armies against the US giant are Euro-based and have been developing steady steam moving forward for years. This puts pressure on Autodesk which has largely turned its attention to other product lines and directions—especially to cloud.
A DWG-based BIM?
One of the biggest changes at Autodesk over the past decade was the move to focus on the future of AEC around its Revit BIM product line, putting AutoCAD and its many AEC line products on the back burner. You can’t move customers away from AutoCAD to Revit if you are putting the same features and capabilities of Revit into AutoCAD. Why leave?
This has left an interesting vacuum which the Bricsys folks have taken aim at. The idea is to develop BIM features into BricsCAD. We anticipate, given the company’s involvement with the ODA (Open Design Alliance), that the company will also introduce native Revit file compatibilities in the near future, much like Vectorworks 2017.
Next Week in Munich
Next week in Munich, Bricsys will start its two day conference with a heavy focus on sales financial data along with developer sessions. They also have something of a mini-expo with developer partners.
On the second day they will have a welcoming keynote, announcements from the work the company is doing with with the ODA, and a what’s new in BricsCAD v17. The company has a long session on direct modeling and assembly, and its vertical directions in BricsCAD Sheet Metal and BricsCAD BIM.
To learn more about this conference, or to register to attend, visit here.