The clone wars AutoCAD’s popularity and high cost spawned a copycat DWG clone industry. Now mature, the clone developers are not content with mirroring its functionality but are aiming for verticalised BIM and manufacturing capability, writes Martyn Day.
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long time ago in a galaxy far, an in-house competitor to kill them off, so far away, the Empire devel- Softdesk created a team to make a clone oped this CAD software called AutoCAD, code named IntelliCAD. With complications of the sale, AutoCAD, which swept all professional 2D CAD systems before it, Autodesk was horrified to see what until it ruled the Galaxy with its proprie- Softdesk had been doing in the shadows tary DWG file format. Slowly but surely a but, as Softdesk had previously been in rebellion rose up with the purpose of negotiations to sell IntelliCAD to the inthe US Federal Trade undermining the Empire and all the ene- house team, mies of the Empire chipped in to create Commission got involved and IntelliCAD the Open Design Alliance and IntelliCAD had to be sold separately due to competiTechnical Consortium to reverse engineer tion rules. Autodesk had unwittingly and clone the file format and enable low- unleashed a highly-developed AutoCAD DWG clone onto the market and Visio er-cost, yet compatible drawing tools. Unlike Luke Skywalker and the Jedi snapped it up for $6.7 million and then also acquired the Marcomp Knights, the DWG rebels Autodirect DWG toolkit to never really managed to beef up development. In make any decisive blows to For very large retaliation Autodesk develthe Empire and have really Autodesk oped Actrix, a Visio clone just nibbled at the edges. customers now to hit back. While I have been writing Eventually Autodesk about CAD for almost 30 facing significant Actrix and IntelliCAD years, the DWG clone marprice hikes, the under Visio flopped, selling ket rarely caused budgeta lot less than expected, but Autodesk to lose sleep but constraints will the clone DWG developinstead ensured all of ment was kept alive by the Autodesk’s competitors lead some to IntelliCAD Technical had some level of DWG in evaluate Consortium created by and out capability to ease collaboration. However AutoCAD clones, Visio and funded by eager competitors. they must be doing some- their capabilities, Autodesk thing right as firms such as cost of ownership Earlier, Visio created the OpenDWG Alliance to get the Open Design Alliance and many independent and compatibility help in decoding the DWG format, which eventually AutoCAD clone developers became the Open Design such as Bricsys (formerly Bricsnet) and Graebert are all still in Alliance. This Alliance, with 1,250 memexistence and continuing to invest in bers, now not only reverse engineers DWG, ARX and many aspects of developing AutoCAD clone functionality. Autodesk’s clone problem originated Autodesk’s proprietary CAD toolkits but though acquisition. In a period when also Bentley’s DGN and now Revit’s BIM Autodesk was acquiring some of its most formats. (It is now a whole ecosystem in successful third-party developers, it itself. CAD journalist Ralph Grabowski is acquired Softdesk, developer of AEC ver- the industry expert in this area and we recommend following upfrontezine.com). tical applications, for about $90 million. The reaction from Autodesk ranged The company’s owner, Dave Arnold, had been secretly investing in developing his from trying to copyright DWG and rollown CAD tool, so as not to have to rely on ing out a ‘100% pure DWG’ advertising Autodesk’s underlying AutoCAD engine. campaign, to introducing a RealDWG Autodesk had established a practice of toolkit of chosen developers. However, either buying its developers or developing once in 2006 Autodesk sued the Open
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Autodesk University 2017 special edition
Design Alliance for copyright infringement, as Autodesk had added a copyrighted term into the file format to allow AutoCAD to recognise when a DWG of non-Autodesk origin was being loaded to warn AutoCAD customers that the data may be not a ‘TrueDWG’. The Alliance had to stop cloning that part of DWG. The AutoCAD clone, or ‘workalike’ market has tended to stay off our radar at AEC Magazine, mainly because we have focussed on BIM, as opposed to document production. However, with increased capability and mature products there now seems to be an appetite from clone developers to get into BIM and high end solid modelling (MCAD). This, in is addition to the added twist that Autodesk’s move to Subscription, which increases the cost of ownership over three years and additionally puts perpetual licensing at risk, is driving some very large and previously non-clone-friendly Autodesk customers to re-evaluate the cost of subscription to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. Over the past six months I have visited two of the key DWG European clone developers to see how they are adapting to the world of BIM and to attempt to estimate their opportunities in the face of Autodesk customers’ unhappiness at Subscription costs and their changing attitude to AutoCAD and DWG.
Bricsys Based in Ghent, Belgium, Bricsys is a long-established DWG-based developer with its product BricsCAD (the company was formerly called Bricsnet) which is run by CEO Erik de Keyser. With 135 employees, 90% of them programmers, Bricsys is very much focused on software development and uses an innovative online sales and support system for distribution. With such a mature product, BricsCAD is far from being a straight clone and has diversified to offer more capabilities, while staying true to the AutoCAD ribbon interface. An AutoCAD user would feel very comfortable finding tools and navigating the user-interface. www.AECmag.com
