Architosh was in attendance for Graphisoft’s special launch event in Budapest last week, where the company unveiled its latest versions of Archicad, BIMcloud, DDScad, and BIMx applications for the AEC market.
Speaking at the press conference on day two of the event, new Graphisoft CEO Daniel Csillag said that after just over a half year in the new CEO position and traveling around the world, he has recognized that “Graphisoft doesn’t just have customers; the company has friends.”
Used by Star Architects
Csillag also noted that he has enjoyed meeting a lot of star designers because, as he noted, “Graphisoft has an over average footprint in the very famous architect ecosystem.”
CEO Daniel Csillag at the Graphisoft Launch Event Press Conference held 3 October 2024 in Budapest at Graphisoft Park.
“If you look at certain prize winners, half of them use Archicad, and our market share is not half in the world, so obviously, we have over-average representation here.”
Csillag also noted that Archicad’s market share in leading markets in Europe may run 75 percent of the market, but the company is growing fast in the Americas and APAC (Asia-Pacific). A core takeaway from Csillag’s comments is that in central Europe, they lead the market, and in other markets, they are usually the first challenger or the second challenger.
Common Nemetschek Cloud
Despite the many new exciting capabilities in Archicad 28 and the latest BIMcloud, BIMx, and DDScad solutions, the most interesting and far-impacting news coming out of Budapest last week was learning about what Graphisoft called the single or “One Nemetschek Cloud” platform. (see image below).
Put simply, the Nemetschek Group has a shared cloud platform vision, which can easily be seen as similar in scope to Autodesk Construction Cloud. Like Nemetschek’s rival, multiple cloud app solutions will exist related to individual daughter companies but will be tied together at the data level through a shared services layer whilst also being foundationally connected at the hyperscaler services layer via a common infrastructure layer.
The hyperscalers will likely include Amazon Web Services (AWS), among others, and the One Nemetschek Cloud platform’s cloud apps and customer data will be stored and computed at the selected hyperscaler provider. Meanwhile, the One Nemetschek Cloud Platform (likely not its official name) as a common layer will include a model manager, model viewer, a BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) server, licensing and security server components, and more.
An image of the slide Marton Kiss, Chief Product Officer at Graphisoft, showed during the press conference talking about Nemetschek Group platform integration.
It should be stated that Allplan, Archicad, and Vectorworks—its three Nemetschek BIM authoring solutions—will all have their own cloud solutions for viewing BIM models and drawings and managing AEC project issues. However, those clouds will share a “common code.” There has even been discussion about the award-winning Graphisoft BIMx serving as the basis for the shared “model viewer” layer.
Recently, Vectorworks announced its new Vectorworks Cloud Document Reviewer solution, which the company said would jump to include 3D modeling viewing in the next few versions. In Budapest, it was noted that Allplan had similar news about its cloud solution coming in the next few weeks.
Additionally, the all-important Bluebeam and its Bluebeam Cloud platform will also be a part of the One Nem Cloud platform vision. In fact, in an interview with CEO Daniel Csillag last week, Architosh learned that US-based Bluebeam is a critical lever for US-based expansion for Nemetschek Group companies and vice versa in the European Union.
In the not-too-distant future, a markup cloud item in Bluebeam Cloud will communicate as an “issue” inside BIMx and Archicad. In other words, the shared services layer in the One Nem Cloud platform, based on common APIs, will allow data to flow freely between the various Nemetschek Group’s daughter company applications.
Closing Comments
In this Budapest Part 1 report, we have covered general Graphisoft market information along with the common cloud vision for the Nemetschek Group. In Part 2, we will dive deeper into Graphisoft’s data strategy and future AI (artificial intelligence) goals based on an interview at Graphisoft Park. There will be a Part 3 and possibly a Part 4 article as well.
Graphisoft did a wonderful job hosting approximately nine AEC technology journalists (at one point on the trip, I overheard a Graphisoft employee refer to us as “influencers.”), two from the United States, one from the UK, and the rest from Germany.
Spending large segments of time at the Graphisoft Park headquarters is always enjoyable. Still, part of our time was focused on architectural tours, including an architect-led tour of our hotel building complex, which a Hungarian Archicad-based firm executed. That particular project and tour were fascinating, and hopefully, Architosh can focus some feature attention on that firm and project.
Stay tuned for our Part 2 and 3 reports as we dive deeper into the technical and business details in each subsequent article.
[Editor’s Note: This article has been further edited. “One Nemetschek Cloud” instead of “One Nem Cloud,” plus other minor edits. — 15 Oct 24]