The Nemetschek Group today announced an interoperability agreement with Autodesk to improve collaboration and interoperability within the architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AEC/O) industries.
As part of the agreement, the two AEC/O industry software giants will open up their APIs (application programming interfaces) to each other, enabling leading AEC industry software tools from both companies to share data.
Shared APIs
For far too long, the AEC/O industry has been plagued with siloed data trapped in proprietary software file formats and closed cloud systems. This new agreement will enhance existing interoperability between Nemetschek Group solutions and Autodesk solutions by going beyond interoperability standards like IFC.
Today the technology landscape is complex. There are lots of tools from both Autodesk and Nemetschek, plus the many startups that you know very well.
To optimize collaboration and data workflows better, Nemetschek and Autodesk will allow data from their applications to flow more easily from one cloud platform or desktop application to another so the right kind of data can get to the right people at the right time. This means, in literal terms, Nemetscheck’s solutions like dTwin, Bluebeam Cloud, BIMcloud, and BIMplus industry clouds will connect through APIs to Autodesk industry clouds—Forma Fusion and Flow—and design solutions through Autodesk Platform Services (APS), a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services.
The Nemetschek Group and Autodesk formed a landmark agreement on interoperability in AEC/O. Companies will mutually exchange all their APIs so that each other’s cloud apps and desktop solutions can natively exchange data.
Under the terms of the agreement, Nemetschek and Autodesk will provide mutual access to their APIs and industry clouds so developers from both companies can connect top desktop solutions in AEC to Nemetschek and Autodesk cloud platforms. While the press release notes tools like Allplan, Archicad, Bluebeam, Maxon One, and Vectorworks on the Nemetschek side and AutoCAD, Revit, 3ds Max, and Maya on the Autodesk side, all these solutions and more will have the future capability to communicate with each other’s cloud platforms.
Boosting Open BIM
“Supporting openBIM, interoperability, and open industry standards is deeply rooted in the Nemetschek Group’s DNA,” said Marc Nézet, Chief Strategy Officer of the Nemetschek Group. “Our interoperability agreement with Autodesk is a historic move to give customers the ability to work in any project environment and with any software ecosystem, ultimately resulting in a better-built world.”
“Autodesk is firmly committed to building open, integrated, cloud-powered solutions for our customers that unlock data and connect project teams,” said Amy Bunszel, Executive Vice President of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Solutions at Autodesk. “Extending Autodesk’s cloud and desktop solutions with Nemetschek interoperability is a huge step towards optimizing our customers’ workflows and helping them generate better project outcomes.”
Driven By Reality
Nicolas Mangon, Autodesk Vice President of AEC Strategy, told Architosh that the number one reason for this new agreement between both companies is that AEC demand worldwide necessitates improved workflows. “Today the technology landscape is complex,” says Mangon, “there are lots of tools from both Autodesk and Nemetschek, plus the many startups which you know very well.”
“It is very complicated for workers [in AEC] to manage all the data and to work in these hybrid environments with many solutions from many vendors,” he added.
We are competing in the applications, but we understand it is in our interest for existing users and new users to improve interoperability.
“It all starts with a long list of issues and discontinuity with interoperability while working with various tools,” adds Marc Nézet, Chief Strategy Officer of the Nemetschek Group. To that end, Nézet adds that the nature of maturity plays a role in recognizing the greater importance of cooperation between two stalwart players in AEC industry software.
“We are competing in the applications, but we understand it is in our interest for existing users and new users to improve interoperability,” adds Nézet. “This is what we call organizational maturity. We can continue to compete in the application world, but we want to collaborate on workflow, document management, and user-role management.”
Solving Industry Problems
Mangon noted the size and importance of the Autodesk ecosystem, with thousands of solutions and firms creating tools on top of solutions like AutoCAD and Revit and their cloud platforms. “But many of these companies have been acquired by Nemetschek,” says Mangon. “They used to be Autodesk close partners—especially around engineering companies like Scia and RISA.”
Autodesk maintained engagement with tools like RISA because customers relied on them to work with Revit for structural engineering workflows. However, other tools from Nemetschek were not partners with Autodesk but rather fierce competitors.
“We wanted to normalize the engagement between the two companies and not have some brands that can do certain things with Autodesk while others cannot,” says Mangon. “We thought it would be better to focus on solving industry problems by normalizing everything across the board and that is what you are seeing today with this announcement.”
Adding to this, Marc Nézet provides Architosh with another example that touches on the notion of maturity in the industry. Noting that he was just visiting a customer in France. “This firm has 15 architects who have been working for, say, 20 or 22 years in Archicad, and they are trained, they are experienced, and they are Mac lovers and so on and so forth. But in the real world, they must collaborate with some colleagues who are getting work done in Revit, for instance.”
We wanted to normalize the engagement between the two companies and not have some brands that can do certain things with Autodesk while others cannot.
“So what we want,” adds Nézet, “is for those users not to have the constraints to migrate their application, their competencies, and everything they have created over 10, 15, or 20 years—because it’s training, it’s time, it’s experience, and it’s history from their former projects that they have in their environment.”
“We need to give them the possibility to collaborate with other firms because that is reality today,” he adds, “without them having to leave their preferred environment they have used for decades.”
A Silo-Free Ecosystem
The new interoperability agreement between the Nemetshek Group and Autodesk demonstrates both companies’ commitments to improving data flow, integration, and collaboration and supporting open standards, such as Open BIM, by buildingSMART. While no details were announced as to which applications will first benefit from mutually exchanged APIs, the end goal is the creation of a silo-free ecosystem in the AEC/O industries so that teams can work in their preferred tools and environments using the same digital models in end-to-end workflows.
Architosh Analysis and Commentary
This new agreement speaks to many possible trends in the AEC/O market, including AI (artificial intelligence). But in addressing the obvious first, it is clearly a positive for both Nemetschek and Autodesk customers and their workflows. With this agreement, it means that in the United States, for example, it will not matter if an architecture firm is using a Nemetschek BIM solution while the CDE (common data environment) for the whole project—often selected by the general contractor—is using an Autodesk cloud solution. This was the point Nézet made in this short tale of a French architecture firm long using Archicad on the Mac platform.
And speaking of the Mac platform. Autodesk’s behemoth—Revit—is all but certain to never run on it, according to Autodesk itself. This brings up interesting impacts within AEC, including the Mac platform’s steady but growing market base, semiconductor shifts away from Intel X86 to ARM over this decade, and the continued development of new solutions in the cloud, of which both this publication and AEC Magazine has written about BIM 2.0 startup darlings. All of this conspires against the long-dominant stasis in the industry when it comes to software. In short, as the 2020s continue, we are going to see customers experimenting and shifting to other industry solutions. Some will shift because they want to benefit from ARM-based hardware (either Mac today or Windows in 2025 and beyond) and need solutions that run on it. While others will shift or merely incorporate (additive) new BIM 2.0 solutions. This brings up an obvious question: how much does this new agreement between Nemetschek and Autodesk help their customers remain motivated to stay where they are?
Another interesting question that emerges from this announcement centers on how this agreement may spur on others. What about Trimble and Bentley? While the latter and Autodesk have worked on interoperability efforts in the past, how might this agreement impact them now? What is the infrastructure market benefit of this new agreement? Both companies have key, heavy-engineering or infrastructure solutions.
This agreement between Nemetschek and Autodesk will clearly benefit both companies and their customers. Rather than speculate on exactly how it will be prudent to wait and see what happens.
