#BIC2014
Attendees at the Bricsys conference at the Hesperia Tower hotel in Barcelona
In 2002, Bricsys pivoted and based BricsCAD on IntelliCAD. A decade later, after some issues, they left the ITC, and now program their CAD program independently – like Graebert goes with ARES.
Erik de Keyser is ceo of Bricsys, and these are the notes I took of his keynote address:
“It is our impression that Autodesk is defocusing on AutoCAD,” Eric de Keyser told attendees this morning at Bricsys International Conference 2014. And so applications are disconnected from the core program. Autodesk applications are getting new functions not reflected in the core program; if the core program is not developing, then the rest of the market can take over.
By 2020, DWG will still be used, but is dying. Five years in technology is a long time. But Bricsys is very determined to solve the problem. “We are convinced we can take DWG further than it is today. We add smart behavior and real intelligence to DWG.”
“We want to eliminate settings-itis, where more and more settings are added to a program. After all, we are living in the smartphone era.” For example, dynamic blocks are a good idea, but Bricsys plans to go further. They want to add applications to their cloud offerings. They plan a mobile .dwg app. Whereas Autodesk is imposing the cloud on its customers, BricsCAD is making it an option.
Beyond the product, “we add the best user experience,” he siad. (As a beta tester, I have to agree that Bricsys has the best bug reporting system – and I am someone who has reported over 150 bugs.) “This is not something that is developed in one or two years.”
The best part of being a third-party developer is that Bricsys does not charge for being a developer.
“There are 12 million DWG users who could have an interest in our story,” he concludes. The problem over at Autodesk is that their major vertical apps are somewhat or largely incompatible with AutoCAD – Revit, 3D studio, Inventor, etc. In contrast, Bricsys is designing third-party apps that store all data in DWG files.
(Point of semantics: companies like Bricys print the DWG format as “.dwg”. They use this file extension format to avoid a potential law suit from Autodesk, who has been trying – and failing – to trademark DWG [all capital letters], and along the way has been suing companies who used "DWG" legally. Hence: .dwg.)
[Disclosure: Bricsys paid for half my airfare, my hotel accommodation, and some meals.]
Comments