The acquisition of Bricsys by Intergraph-acquirer Hexagon AB was just announced at the Bricsys 2018 conference in London. That means that BricsCAD is part of an organisation with 2017 sales of €3,470 million – significantly larger than Autodesk.
This follows on from Hexagon’s previous close relationship with Bricsys that led to its CADWorx series of AutoCAD-based products also being available on the BricsCAD platform.
Hexagon Executive VP Rick Allen took the stage to explain his enthusiasm for the BricsCAD product, noting many of the strong points that will be no news to regular readers of this blog. Interestingly, he was not shy of pointing out the various technical and policy areas where Bricsys is strong and Autodesk is weak. That included the ongoing availability of perpetual licenses.
Erik De Keyser announced that he’s not going anywhere following the Hexagon acquisition, which was greeted with applause.
Interesting days lie ahead for Bricsys now it has a parent that’s more powerful than Autodesk.
Things just keep getting interestinger and interestinger!
But this is the most interestingerest of them all!
Hmm, BricsCAD humming along on a new Interact 64 VR/MR workstation. In zero reflectivity black this time, please. Maybe partner up with ANSYS for a big deal real-time Hexagon Productivity Station. See, I’m not always unreasonable.
H is the new A?
I was speaking with Rick Allen last night. I am convinced that he “gets it” and is not going to break what he just bought.
After this, Autodesk doesn’t have much of a moat left around its castle. Though shrinking, AutoCAD is still a major part of the company’s business. AEC is still in a strong position, but when the next downturn hits and architects decide to pause their subscriptions, look out below.
Autodesk – Hexagon = the same narrative?
Hexagon acquired BricsCAD and they doubled the size of the installer.
Not really.
BricsCAD V18.2.05-1 64-bit Windows installer is 263 MB.
BricsCAD V19.1.07-3 64-bit Windows installer is 354 MB.
That’s 35% bigger, but not doubled, and a long way to go to catch up with Autodesk.
Any recent AutoCAD downloaded file (which isn’t is even the installer – the file gets unpacked and dramatically expanded before installation starts) is over 7 times as big. Just the AutoCAD Updates (formerly Service Packs) are usually a lot bigger than the whole BricsCAD product.
Also, I can forgive a product getting bigger when it significantly improves. When it gets bigger without anything of note getting better, and some features even being removed, then I’m less bloat-forgiving.
I don’t see this as a good thing… I do mechanical and sheet metal design. The majority of the upgrades to BricsCAD since V20 are focused on BIM for the architectural market. There has been no reason for my employer to upgrade my machine. And my experience with the acquisition of software companies by larger firms is that the pricing skyrockets, user support suffers, and they dump perpetual licenses. My employer won’t buy software unless it is a perpetual license. And frankly, I wouldn’t either.
There are more user seats for 3D CAD in manufacturing, and other fields, than there are in AEC. So why is Bricsys choosing to limit their market by focusing primarily in BIM.