To tap into the huge number of Auto-CAD users and third-party developers, smaller CAD vendors like Bricsys, Graebert and IntelliCAD replicate many of Auto- CAD’s APIs. AutoCAD’s quick dominance of the market was due to its (then) low price, but also due to architects and engineers buying AutoCAD so that they could customize it themselves, and in some cases even sell the customizations as a new type of business.
With the IFC and MCAD translators, BricsCAD becomes like SpaceClaim, in that it imports 3D models and then uses its direct editing functions to modify them.Ī way to measure the strength of a CAD program is the size of its third-party ecosystem. The size is based partly on the quality of the APIs offered by the CAD vendor.įigure 1: BricsCAD V16 modeling an assembly of sheet metal partsĪutodesk pioneered open APIs in the 1980s in an era when established companies like Computervision and Intergraph customized CAD software on behalf of customers – an expensive extra. (AutoCAD cannot work with assemblies, because it lacks 3D constraints however, it includes the MCAD translators for free.) For AEC and BIM users, Brics- CAD imports and export models in IFC format at no extra cost. To be #1 in 3D, BricsCAD needs to read models from other MCAD systems, and so Bricsys licenses software from translation companies, which allows BricsCAD to imports assemblies, models and drawings from Catia, Solidworks, Inventor and so on. BricsCAD Platinum, with the extra-cost Communicator translation add-on, handles assemblies (product structures), stitches non-watertight models, repairs broken models and optionally simplifies incoming models. But the problem is external and distributed. Not that Bricsys doesn’t have a translation problem. The result is that Autodesk’s vertical software is file-incompatible with DWG, and Autodesk went through years of incrementally improving its translators just to allow users to exchange data among itsīy employing the universal DWG file format, BricsCAD is accessible to existing DWG users, and the company doesn’t spend energy writing translators between its vertical apps. It has a different file format for each of its MCAD programs, Inventor and Fusion another format for its Revit BIM software and so on.
(PTC and Bentley Systems take a similar approach, but use their own formats, not DWG.) Not even Autodesk does this.
Therefore, it is a niche because few other CAD vendors rely on just DWG for storing models from vertical applications. There are external support files, but all 2D and 3D model data can be kept in that ubiquitous DWG format, thanks to internal extensions designed by Autodesk to store any kind of data (extended entity data). Now, this may not seem like a niche, as most CAD software reads and maybe writes drawings in DWG, a format that’s been called “universal.” The Bricsys twist is that it stores all model data in DWG files – whether 2D CAD, BIM, 3D MCAD or geospatial. The niche that de Keyser decided on is DWG. In this article, I analyze the technology Bricsys is developing in its attempt to make BricsCAD software significant in the 3D market.Įvery CAD vendor finds a niche and then builds its strength within that confine. Dassault has its Enovia database Autodesk is pivoting to subscription-based cloud applications Bentley Systems is all about infrastructure and Intergraph focuses on plant design. Since 2002, Bricsys has been working on the AutoCAD-compatible BricsCAD, initially based on IntelliCAD, but now completely rewritten with its own code. It was founded in 1986 as Bricsworks, which developed and then sold Bentley Systems their 3D architectural design package now known as MicroStation TriForma.
Erik de Keyser’s goal might make you reflexively choke on your morning coffee, given the long-established lead corporate giants like Dassault Systemes and Autodesk have in the development of 3D and associated technology – like PLM systems, point cloud manipulation or database storage of model parts – along with the necessarily incessant marketing.īut Bricsys is no new company. “I plan to make BricsCAD #1 in 3D by 2020.” That’s the gist of an outrageous sounding claim made by the CEO of Bricsys, a small CAD software company headquartered in Belgium.