Bricsys 2018 Conference – London

[CAD Panacea]

By now you have probably seen the news that was announced early at the Bricsys 2018 conference last week in London, at the Brewery.  Hexagon AB has acquired Bricsys, and Bricsys at least for the time being will continue to operate independently with Erik de Keyser still leading the team behind BricsCAD, chief among their applications. Bricsys will operate under Hexagon PPM. There is a lot of speculation how this acquisition will change things in the future, and we will have to wait and see. But it is no secret that Hexagon and their existing customers of applications such as CADWorx, love the performance, stability, and value of BricsCAD as compared to other CAD platforms.

Neil Peterson, President of the Open Design Alliance spoke about upcoming developments on their end. Two notable things worth mentioning that are not here yet, but coming to .DWG are internal version history and multiuser editing without file locking.

Bricsys 2018 continued with a presentation by Robert Green of Robert Green Consulting, and Heidi Hewett from Bricsys. Robert explained how and why many of his clients are moving from other CAD platforms to BricsCAD, with a summery of five points.

1. Lower initial costs. BricsCAD Platinum starts at US$1,110, and BricsCAD Classic starts at US$590.
2. Lower maintenance (ongoing) costs. BricsCAD annual maintenance is $200/year, as compared to the reoccurring annual rental cost of $1,575 for AutoCAD.
3. With BricsCAD, his customers have multiple licensing options, most importantly including the ability to purchase a perpetual license.
4. Ease of adoption of BricsCAD for existing AutoCAD users. With its familiar interface, there is almost no training needed. One of Robert’s strategies is to just let the user have access to BricsCAD at first, and not even mention training.
5. Lastly, with its perpetual licensing, if your business has a downturn and needs to skip a year or two on upgrades, BricsCAD will continue running. AutoCAD stops running when your subscription expires. Something to consider.

Heidi Hewett was up next and presented her famous “What’s new in ….”, except it was for BricsCAD v19 this time. Lynn Allen, also in attendance called here the “QueenOfCAD in her element” and said it was great to see her back on the main stage.

#queenofcad in her element https://t.co/XJkUGSyPbb

— Lynn Allen (@Lynn_Allen) October 24, 2018

Some of the new features include a single dimensioning command that recognizes the object being dimensioned, and linking Excel spreadsheets to the .DWG file. The Nearest Distance tool will detect and report, in real time, the nearest distance between any two objects. BricsCAD v19 now includes a Block Editor. One of everyone’s favorite new tools is the Blockify command that allows you to select any geometry that should be made into a block and not only will it be transformed into a block, but any other geometry that matches the selection will also be turned into a block, while maintaining the scale, and orientation of the original separate geometry. In one example, Blockify was used on a 33.5 MB drawing to create blocks from identical geometry, and when the drawing was saved the file size was 3.5MB, or about 1/10 the original size.

There is a new command for BIM that will create sequentially numbered tags, a command called Parametrize that will automatically create parameters and constraints for plain geometry. BimPropagate is the new iteration of last year’s BimSuggest allowing you to propagate certain details throughout the model.

In the civil engineering world, there is now a command to create 3D TIN models from data points, drawing objects, or even a Civil 3D surface, as well as a new grading tool that works with the 3D TIN.

All of this is still inside the same BricsCAD UI, and saved to the familiar .DWG file format. If you develop applications, small or large, for BricsCAD, there are many new features in v19 for you also.

Bricsys 2018 (the portion at The Brewery) ended with a valediction by Erik de Keyser reiterating his desire to remain in place, which concluded with a standing ovation from the crowd in attendance.

Standard ovation for Erik at #BRICSYS2018 pic.twitter.com/5xT9mAoSyR

— Steve Johnson (@SteveJohnsonCAD) October 24, 2018

Bricsys 2018 continued a few hours later at Cafe de Paris where everyone was treated to another great Bricsys post-conference party. Robert Green even sat in with the band on several songs as he did last year in Paris.

We will be watching throughout 2019 to see how the Hexagon acquisition affects Bricsys and BricsCAD.

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