ARES Trinity — A Review of the Industry Leading DWG CAD Software

AS WE APPROACH A COMPREHENSIVE DEEP DIVE into ARES Trinity, we must state from the outset that when it comes to the native DWG (AutoCAD compatible) CAD solutions on the market, the German-based ARES solution has been an industry leader in both technical and market aspects for over a decade.

How, you might ask?

On the market side, the Berlin-based CAD developer was the first to bring native DWG CAD to the Mac platform beating Autodesk’s return to the Mac by a few months. On the technical side, ARES Kudo leads the CAD market in web browser-based native (.dwg) CAD. We will touch on other aspects of leadership later on in this review.

What is ARES Trinity?

Graebert uses the word “Trinity” to define its ARES CAD ecosystem of solutions that span desktop (ARES Commander), cloud-web (ARES Kudo), and mobile (ARES Touch). When we mention “ecosystem” in this review, we mean Trinity.

This ARES ecosystem of products uniquely in the CAD market fully converses with each other with a level of features and benefits not entirely matched by any other CAD competitor. In this in-depth review, we will dive deep into all these features—some more deeply than others based on their unique value benefits.

Preamble — ARES Licensing

ARES Trinity has a sophisticated set of flexible licensing options. We will only go over some of them in detail. However, I will explain my particular setup, the Flex Cloud license. Like other ARES Trinity licenses, it includes access to ARES Commander, ARES Kudo, and ARES Touch but with the additional benefit of sharing it across multiple users.

The beauty of the Flex Cloud license, which I will go over in more detail below, is that it works like a flexible network license wherein you can have unlimited numbers of users sharing a certain number of licenses, but they are not constrained to a LAN. Instead, it works through the cloud, and this provides the benefit of added flexibility.

Before the Flex Cloud license option (which is new), users had all of these options: subscription licenses, perpetual licenses, and flexible network licenses. And they still do.

Ten Key ARES Features

Architosh has reviewed ARES Commander in the past, so this in-depth feature will not dwell on all aspects of ARES Commander, the desktop version of ARES that competes head-to-head with other native (.dwg) file-based CAD programs.

Instead, I’ll focus on the following ten key features wholistic to Trinity and explain why below:

1. New Flex Cloud Licensing
2. Synchronization of Files
3. Comments and Markups
4. User Access and Rights Control
5. Sessions Handling
6. Email Notifications
7. Version History
8. Share View-only Links
9. Trinity Block Library
10. Work on Any Device

This is an extensive list of features to touch upon, so this review will be lengthy. I will try to be as succinct as possible. You can use the links on those ten topics to jump to specific pages in this two-page review. For insights and a demo of these ten key features, readers should join a free 30-minute webinar I will be offering on 13 April 23 at Graebert neXt event.

One: New Flex Cloud Licensing

While some companies may have on-premise (on-prem) concerns about intellectual property control, most modern businesses will likely favor the new Flex Cloud license. The answer is obvious. We now work from home more than we did before the global pandemic. But even before that, some firms have employees traveling far to job and client locations, even in different countries or continents.

A Flex Cloud license does come with a slight premium. The price of three (3) Flex Cloud licenses equals that of five (5) Annual plans for Trinity. Recall that Trinity means user access to ARES desktop, web, and mobile versions. I won’t bore you with the economic benefit line, but sharing a three-user Flex Cloud license saves you money if you have five (5) or more users.

In my example, Graebert set Architosh up with three (3) Flex Cloud licenses, and each user can be identified with a name. To begin with, I wanted to simulate two separate employees, so I will name them Architect-1 and Architect-2. (see image 1)

A beautiful benefit of ARES’s Flex Cloud license emerges when your firm has many users, and the firm does not want the IT admins to manage licenses for everyone assigning them one by one. Who wants to bother with all that work? Instead, under a Flex Cloud license, an admin invites an employee from the Graebert Customer Portal via email.

From the Admin Space of the portal, the Permissions menu item displays specific ARES products and their license and permission serial numbers. At the bottom, you can see the “Assign users to a select permission” field, whereupon you enter a colleague’s email address and click “Send email notification.” This is how an Admin would manually assign and unassign licenses if you don’t buy a Flex Cloud license. But if you have many users working only a few hours per week, the Flex Cloud license is enabling you to share automatically your license among all the users you invited to your organization.

 

 

 

 

Aside from possible cost savings, another reason for the Flex Cloud license comes down to unique features capable of it. Unlike the Flex Network license, the Flex Cloud version provides access to cloud-powered collaborative features special to Trinity.

Flex operates through the cloud; there is nothing to install besides the ARES Commander app. Flex Cloud works with both local files and cloud-stored files. And the Flex Cloud license lets users invite others to view and comment on files online via ARES Kudo in View-Only Links mode. That, too, is not possible with a Flex Network license.

One advantage to Flex Network licenses is they can be Perpetual licenses. Flex Cloud licenses can only be Subscription licenses. So there is the main trade-off. The reason is that Flex Cloud includes the Trinity license, which means cloud-based interconnections between ARES Commander on the desktop and ARES Kudo and ARES Touch, which are cloud-based apps. Cloud-based services cannot be perpetual by their nature.

Another way to think about it is this: Perpetual licenses reflect the 20th-century practice of computing on discreet desktop computers. The 21st-century “cloud era” adds two additional device types (smartphones and tablets) and the cloud-delivered app via the browser. Such a system is better served with a subscription.

Two: Synchronization of Files

ARES Trinity has powerful cloud connectivity features giving users robust cloud storage access options and file synchronization capabilities. These are most important for today’s remote work reality.

Before setting up a cloud storage provider, you can use the ARES Kudo drive. In fact, after creating a quick test file, I discovered that sample files are placed by default into your ARES Kudo drive folder.

To connect to a third-party drive, like Google Drive, you hit the button to the right of the Open ARES Kudo button upper left in the Cloud Storage palette. (see images 2-3) Doing so brings up a web browser window where you see various cloud storage connection options.

Once I set up my Google Drive, I created a new ARES folder. Working with my test file, I then saved it to the linked cloud storage folder. Once completed, I am now able to test out file synchronization features.

My test account enables me three users, and I have ARES Commander running on a Mac and a Windows PC. Using the “Art Center floorplans.dwg” file, I will imagine my second account as a remote colleague working with me to update this plan. (see plan images below.)

My first task is to add some additional seating on the exterior directly across from the interior cafe space. (see image 4). I do this, then close the file. A bit later, my colleague working on a Mac (it is me!) opens up the file. We can see the file under ARES Commander on the Mac. Notice the UI differences, as this is the Mac version. (see image 5) Also, note that in the upcoming 2024 release of ARES Commander for Mac and for Linux, they will both acquire the new Ribbon UI that already exists on the Windows version. This is good because the Ribbon UI is contextual and dynamically changes based on what the user is doing. (see here image top of the article)

My colleague on the Mac edits the tables putting them into a new layer just for tables on the exterior, and leaves me a comment in the Comments palette about what to do next. Before we go into Comments and Markups, let’s summarize File Synchronization.

Setting up Cloud file storage options is very easy in ARES. The “Cloud+” icon button loads up ARES Kudo Cloud Storage main page in the browser. (see images 2-3). Select your cloud storage options, and away you go. Disconnecting accounts is easy as you hit the “X button” underneath a connected account.

Managing files in the Cloud palette is robust. You can do basically everything from creating folders to generating directory structure, renaming, cloning, deleting, and downloading files. You can also download entire folders.

If a colleague has opened a file you already have open, they will get a warning message. ARES alerts the user for a potential conflict of two or more users accessing the same file simultaneously. Additionally, if there is ever a technical slip-up, the ARES system will create what is known as a conflicted copy, and this gets labeled in the Cloud palette file directory.

Users working on files together must coordinate to avoid conflicting copies and problems. (see my thoughts on this in the Conclusions section) But the system is designed to help safeguard data.

Three: Comments and Markups

In my example of using two machines (a PC and a Mac) to work between two users, I quickly tested some markup tools and the Comments palette to test the file synchronization features noted above.

ARES Trinity has robust markup and commenting across its ecosystem of products. In ARES Commander, there is a Comments palette. A user can add a new Comment about the drawing as a whole or a specific element. The palette at the upper left provides two button options–Create a New Comment Thread or Create a New Markup. (image 6-7)

The first option is relatively straightforward. You give your new Comment a title and a description. You can also select Add entities, allowing the user to select entities in the drawing about which the Comment’s subject matter centers. I am impressed with this ability because a Zoom icon used later will help a colleague zoom automatically to the entities under discussion in the comment. (image 7) This functions similarly to BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) features in BIM tools—taking you to where the action is.

Once a user creates a comment, gives it substance in its text, a title, and a description, and attaches entities, then the user hits the Save button in the lower right. Because you can zoom to a specific set of entities using the Comments palette, one could actually use this feature to save various views of the drawing at specific Zoom levels–even if just temporarily for working in a particular area. (see images)

Colleagues can respond to your comments directly by typing in the Reply field. They can respond by clicking a Check Box icon next to the Zoom icon. That changes the status of the Comment to “resolved.”  A filter feature in the Comments palette enables the user to change what is visible in the Comments palette based on status, type of comment, and sub-type info (such as entity comments.) (see image 9)

Users can also add a special comment type that adds pictures, voice recordings, or stamps. Stamps say things like Approved, Confidential, Draft, Final, For Review, and Rejected, and you can create custom stamps. While stamps can be helpful, I wonder why these “stamp” statuses are not built into text comments via a simple drop-down menu.

Attaching pictures seems immediately valuable. But there is a difference between attaching images on the desktop versus ARES Touch. On the iPad running ARES Touch, there is a slicker workflow for using the iPad’s camera to attach images. On the desktop, you will navigate to where images are stored to attach pictures.

What happens is you end up with PR icons on the floor plan, corresponding ideally to where a photo was taken. That is an acceptable methodology. However, you may want to attach pictures to entities like furniture in some workflows. You don’t need the PR icon using Zoom to entities function in these workflows. What happens now is you Zoom to the PR icon, whereas in the Comments tool, you Zoom to entities, and those entities are highlighted in blue for clarification.

Despite these critical comments and feedback, ARES Trinity provides powerful and beneficial markup and commenting features.

Four: User Access and Rights Control

Architosh has a long tradition of not mentioning competitors in product reviews—preferring to say “the competition,” for example.

In some cases, however, it underserves the reader too much. Regarding Graebert’s chief competitors in the native (.dwg) CAD file space, who feature a type of ecosystem, it must be stated that only Autodesks’ AutoCAD product line has a similar ecosystem to ARES Trinity. BricsCAD, while unique in many ways, does not.

The ARES ecosystem is broader and deeper than its rival(s) in several ways. User access and rights control is one example. Supported platforms and devices are another.

In ARES Commander, cloud technology for sharing access to files functions differently than the competition. With ARES, sharing copies of a CAD drawing through third-party cloud service providers is unnecessary. For general everyday workflow purposes, the ARES user shares a file for viewing and markup only, or they share a drawing for full editing purposes. Users can achieve these tasks directly from the Cloud Storage palette inside ARES Commander. (see image 11 – 12 view-only link, but the user has permission to Print to PDF.)

Select a file in the Cloud Storage palette and select Sharing Options. A Sharing options window will appear. If you share via a third-party cloud like Google Drive, type in a person’s email address and hit the Add button. Then under the Role drop-down menu, choose to grant this user access rights such as Viewer or Editor. (see image).

Select the ARES Sharing link method if you want to share a drawing with someone as a Viewer. Copy the share link URL into your email program and send it away. That user will then click the URL from their email and launch ARES Kudo into “Viewer only” status. Some additional options for more user access control include expiring the URL link at a specific date or 30 days or never, plus password protection for added security and allowing Print to PDF capability.

Those are unmatched industry features in the world of DWG CAD. We have several more to highlight, like session handling and more, so click below to continue this feature article. 

next page:  Session Handling and the Remaining Ten Key Trinity Features

Five: Session Handling

These user access controls discussed above are very robust, granular, and flexible. They are largely unmatched in the industry. But there is another more crucial difference between the ARES ecosystem of CAD products and how they work together with the cloud, and that is with what is known as “session handling.”

If you use a cloud storage provider like Dropbox or Google Drive, these cloud systems cannot prevent simultaneous access to the same file from multiple users. While there can be various alerts and notifications, what results often are known as “conflicting copies.”

ARES Commander, Kudo, and Touch all utilize ARES’s built-in session handling to eliminate this problem. Suppose a second user tries to work on a file another user already has open. In that case, the second user will be notified of the situation and granted View-only access. But unlike other cloud systems, ARES can tell the second user who the first user is who had editing control of the file.

 

 

 

 

This assumes something important, though: both users are using ARES software. In the case of team members able to touch the same files, such users must access all their firm files via the ARES Cloud Storage palette in Commander and the same palettes in ARES Kudo and ARES Touch. You stay within the ARES system, which safeguards the files from conflicting copies and overwrites. But remember, Graebert can do nothing to alter the reality that access to files integrated into ARES via third-party clouds is accessible directly through those cloud clients.

Some final caveats about ARES and session handling. During my review, I discovered I would get locked out if I stepped away from a file for a lunch break. ARES will automatically save and close a user’s editing session after 25 minutes of inactivity. But this is valuable. It prevents a single user from locking out all other users on a team by simply keeping ARES and that file open. Imagine, at the end of the day, a user in Singapore calls it a day but doesn’t save and close a file. No problem. Users in France can take over editing permissions and control of the file within 26 minutes of the user’s inactivity in Singapore. The following day the user in Singapore will discover he lost his editing rights on that file and must close it and re-open it to regain those rights.

Six: Email Notifications

So the next question is, how do multiple teammates know which files are open and which have recently been updated? The answer to the first question has already been noted. If a second user has editing control of a file, other users on the team can see this inside ARES, but only once they attempt to open it. A popup will say, “Unable to obtain editing session for ‘My DWG file.dwg’ because the following users are currently editing it.”

The other way is via email notifications set to “on” by default in the Cloud Storage palette. (see image 14). All teammates will get email notifications whenever a teammate modifies a file stored in a third-party cloud drive. The frequency of these email notifications can be altered so “daily digests” can be produced rather than many discreet emails.

As noted in the section on markups, email notifications capture communications between teammates working on drawings together. All markup activities go out as email notifications. ARES can convert audio notes—say, input from ARES Touch on an iPad at the job site—into text now found in the email notification. Any picture markups result in images inserted into the email notifications.

So this is a very complete and robust team notification system in ARES Trinity. What is nice is that if you open a drawing from the email notifications, the system detects if you have ARES Commander or ARES Touch installed on your device and, if not, will default to opening the file in ARES Kudo in the device’s browser. If it detects Commander or Touch installed, it will offer you a choice between one of those two and Kudo.

Seven: Share View-Only Links

One of the critical differentiators of ARES Trinity is that it truly reflects the idea of a single source of truth. Is it the only CAD company that does? Of course not. But amongst its native (.dwg) rivals, it has the cleanest and most feature-rich execution of the “single source of truth” (SSoT) doctrine.

When sharing that single source of truth CAD file with anybody—a colleague not on your team, a peer, a consultant, or a client—ARES enables you to share simply a View-only URL link. Where ARES stands out is what happens next.

ARES has toggle settings in the dialog window that give the sharer the ability to decide if the recipient is allowed to Print to PDF. (image 15 above) There is also the ability to expire the link—which adds security in case the link is embedded in future emails beyond the parties initially involved. And for extra security, the sharer can set a password. (see image 16)

But there is one more thing about how ARES shares View-only links that is very valuable: ARES View-only links do not require any login to display the CAD drawing in ARES Kudo. If the receiver wants to make Comments on the drawing (see section above on Comments), they will need to sign up for ARES Kudo, and a free version is available for any user.

The option—but not a requirement—to log in serves an expediting function. You may want to get on the phone with a client to discuss something. The client can use the View-only links to look at the drawing quickly. They can still measure items and even Print to PDF if you give them that permission. That workflow is more beneficial and common than ARES’s competition has realized.

Two final points. Unlike the competition, ARES does not limit file size on View-only links, not in a per-file sense or a total quantity limitation. Finally, a firm can limit the ability of specific users to share View-only links in the ARES Cloud Portal settings as a security measure.

Eight: Version History

Version history in ARES Trinity saves whole files into cloud storage and holds onto data for up to 30 days, or the max amount of time defined by the third-party cloud provider. This gives users ample time to execute “fallbacks” to older file versions for many reasons. Some reasons may be for design iterations, but such iterative work phases should be handled with discreet versions of files and managed smartly in project file directories.

A primary benefit of version history is to leverage its compare features. With ARES, users can select an older version from the version history listing and pick Compare to active version or Select version to compare. ARES will then show the differences between the two files using red and green colors to differentiate deleted and added elements between the compared files. (see image 17)

One final aspect new to ARES Trinity is the ability to upload a file to your history and promote it as the new version. So how does this benefit the user?

Say a team is working on a file for three weeks. ARES Trinity captures the version histories and the markups and comments. Then imagine a new project stakeholder (ie: consultant) who wants to touch that file and add to it using a non-ARES DWG CAD software (maybe AutoCAD or BricsCAD). They can absolutely do so and you can promote that new file—even if the file name changes—as the new current version in ARES in the history version palette. All the previous history, comments, and markups remain in your history, intact. Promoting a file as the new file in the history palette also solves the issue when users work disconnected from the Internet.

Nine: Trinity Block Library

Also new in ARES Trinity 2024 is the Trinity Block Library. Trinity Block Library block items are kept in the cloud and available to all ARES Trinity CAD products, from Commander, Kudo, or Touch. This is very useful because one can organize a library of items from furniture, vehicles, lights, people, annotation, equipment, and other things common in your drawings. It means no matter where you are or what device you are using, you can access your common blocks via your Trinity Block Library on demand.

Additionally, you can make your Trinity Block Libraries available to others. You do this when you create a new block library. To do this, you open the Block Library palette. The settings gear icon opens the Block Library Manager in a web browser. (see image 19) Available default libraries will appear. To make a new block library, click on the folder with a plus icon button (upper left). (see image 19).

You enable “Is Organization Library” in the dialog during the create new block library process. This makes this particular new Trinity Block Library available to all your ARES Cloud account organization members. Once created, you can now add blocks to this specific library for your team.

You open the Block Library Manager again via the Block Library palette. You now select the new block library (mine is named ARES Test Library). (see image 19). You then hit the upload icon upper left and navigate to your file that contains the blocks you want to share in your newly named block library.

The “Organization library” block folders have a two-person icon on the folder. Those that are not shared within your organization but only belong to you as a single user–your personal Trinity Block libraries–do not. (see image 19)

Ten: Work on Any Device

Finally, the ARES Trinity 2024 ecosystem of CAD applications richly supports Mac, Windows, and Linux on standard personal computers and workstations, Apple iOS, iPadOS, and Google Android for tablets and smartphones, plus ARES Kudo in most modern web browsers.

This is the most democratized CAD platform in existence. And while being on Linux may seem trivial to many in western nations, Linux is more prevalent in some Government-led organizations or countries like India, Russia, and Indonesia—all markets where CAD is expected to grow (particularly India).

One of ARES’s most substantial advantages over its DWG competition is its ARES Kudo web-browser-based offering. It is not just an app for reviewing CAD drawings; you can actually start a file in ARES Kudo from scratch.

Conclusions and Recommendations

We ran this product review on a Windows BOXX Technologies workstation—our primary test machine for GPU reviews—and one of our iMacs for general use at Architosh. We tried to run it on our Apple Silicon test Mac mini, but ARES is not ready yet for prime time on Apple Silicon. The company says full native Apple Silicon support is coming later this year.

This review is focused on ARES Trinity 2024. We delved into ARES’s top features that distinguish it from its rivals. Its licensing is the best in the entire CAD industry—flexibility galore! Who doesn’t want that? Yes! Perpetual licenses still matter to some critical segments of the CAD industry, and Graebert meets those folks where they are.

The ten areas we focused on distinguish the benefits of the Trinity cloud technology that runs through the ARES product line. If I had to pick a favorite feature, it would be a toss-up between ARES’s excellent Commenting system and View only links. With employees working from everywhere these days on shared assets, they need powerful asymmetrical communication technology. But View-only links that don’t require a user to log is a big time-saver versus creating PDFs to mail clients or stakeholders progress updates.

I also think the synchronization of files across third-party clouds in our testing was very robust. This must be considered in the remote work environment today. But as positive as this review may seem, this doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. And while minor, these asks would add value in my eyes.

MORE: Learn more at the upcoming Graebert neXt Event

The biggest ask is a faster way to see if other teammates are currently editing a file. If another user has editing control of a file, the Cloud Storage palette could color the file name ARES yellow or red, warning the user that clicking on that file to open it will not allow editing control. As already in ARES Kudo, I would hope to see also in ARES Commander a popup window that would alert a user to take over the file as “Editor,” But there isn’t a fast visual queue to know which files are currently active with other teammates. And as we mentioned in the comments and markup section, we think it would be desirable to link pictures to entities much like you can link comments to entities. Presently, images are linked to a PR icon that you place on the plan, which is good for a particular use.

In closing, since we last reviewed ARES (strictly the Mac version) back in 2016, the ARES Trinity app ecosystem has matured nicely. The UI/UX on ARES Kudo is most impressive, and ARES Commander provides robust user interface customization and a dark mode option. The ten feature areas outlined in this review clearly set ARES apart from the competition. For DWG-based CAD users—and there are millions worldwide—the ARES Trinity ecosystem is unmatched in the industry for its value, comprehensive features, device and operating system support, and, most of all, for meeting the needs of how people work today after the global pandemic.