Category Archives: Bricsys

The big Bricsys interview 5 – perpetual licensing and choice

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This is one of a series of posts covering an extensive interview with Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh.

In this post, Erik confirms the Bricsys commitment to perpetual licensing. That’s a statement important enough to preserve, so here’s the recorded audio for posterity.

We also learn what proportion of CAD customers choose perpetual licenses over rental when given fair pricing and the choice. Hint to Autodesk: it’s not 0%.

Steve: Are you committed to the perpetual licensing model?

Erik: Yes, yes. We are committed to choice. If somebody wants another way of licensing our stuff, that’s fine as well. I mean you can hire our stuff, you can pay per month, it’s possible.

Steve: That’s not in all markets, is it?

Erik: We don’t promote it, but it’s possible if somebody contacts us, no problem. It’s choice, and we believe in choice. It’s not up to us to impose how people work with our stuff. But perpetual, it’s fair, I think. Somebody buys software, it’s always been like that, and we have to continue that. And we will continue that. Read my lips! We will continue.

All: (laughs)

Cyrena: Speaking of choice, can you talk about the type and portion of users who go for rental rather than perpetual?

Mark: Of course the vast majority go for perpetual.

Erik: 95% buyers.

Mark: When you see these clients in Russia that have these big oil projects in Siberia for six months or whatever, then it [rental] might make sense. But with the channel… 95, 97, 98% is just perpetual.

But what we see more and more is people are asking about it [rental] more and more, because of course in the Autodesk world there is no other option. So of course people just want to compare apples with apples.

Steve: So they’re just asking for the numbers?

Mark: Yes, for the numbers, “What would it be?” That’s the feeling that we have, ultimately when they make a decision they’re going to go for perpetual.

Erik: Because the price is acceptable as well, I think. It’s not that high a price for a substantial amount of software, so it’s not a problem.

Mark: Our price levels are completely different, of course. It’s affordable.

This is the complete set of links to this interview series:

The big Bricsys interview 4 – thank you, Autodesk

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This is one of a series of posts covering an extensive interview with Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh. In this post, we learn that Autodesk’s move to all-rental has helped drive BricsCAD sales higher and continues to do so.

Cyrena: Backing up just a step to sales, were you able to track any impact on your sales numbers with the chronology of Autodesk’s announcements of ending perpetual? Did you see an effect that you could map to that?

Erik/Mark (together): Yes.

Erik: We see that especially with large companies. I hear it from Mark always!

Mark: That’s what I wanted to explain this morning too, although we have an indirect sales channel, we have our resellers at work out there, especially with the large deals, we are involved always. So there’s always one of our guys, a business development manager together with the local sales person in touch with those larger corporations.

In the last few weeks, we have received tons of emails from large corporations; of course it’s hard to disclose them, but… [names a corporation]. It doesn’t mean they will switch right away, but we have meetings where they say that, “Our contract with Autodesk ends in July, August, whatever, that’s the time we will not extend it. We will not renew it, we will not go to subscription, and we are looking for alternatives.” These are really big, big, corporations. So yes, yes, we see an impact.

Erik: When it comes to alternatives, and with all respect to our colleagues [competitors], we are not the only alternative, but I think we are in a good position. If you see what we have to give people a perspective beyond AutoCAD, well…

If we would only be an AutoCAD clone, and AutoCAD stops further development, it would mean the clones stop further development more or less as well. And all of a sudden the market is going to 3D mechanical, 3D BIM, etc., then it’s a problem. I think that’s where we can play an important role.

The DWG market, the DWG community, if they really want to move on slowly, slowly (and everyone makes his own choices about staying on 2D AutoCAD-based, fine as well), but at least there is a growth path. And I see that BricsCAD is the only product that goes in that direction. All the other alternatives more or less stay around what Autodesk is presenting, with a few differences here and there.

But it’s not really mainstream that there is investment in R&D or really a big jump of other stuff than just being compatible with AutoCAD. It makes a difference.

This is the complete set of links to this interview series:

The big Bricsys interview 3 – looking after people

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This is one of a series of posts covering an extensive interview with Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh. In this post, I learn about Bricsys’ astonishingly good staff retention record and the reasons behind it.

Autodesk likes to periodically pat itself on the back for being a great employer, but history shows it’s a company that discards about 10% of its workforce every few years to keep the share market happy. I suspect another round is coming up soon, unfortunately. There’s a stark contrast between a company that disposes of its chattels in that way and one with a CEO that says, “…every time somebody leaves the company that’s really, really bad.”

You as a customer may not think that matters to you, but it does. I believe there is a direct correlation between Autodesk losing knowledgeable staff and Autodesk repeating old mistakes and breaking things. If today’s developers don’t know why some things in the software are the way they are, or why most changes should automatically come with an off switch, or why some things shouldn’t be done at all, or even how a feature can be maintained (e.g. Visual LISP), then the product suffers. AutoCAD users have to deal with the consequences of those knowledge holes with every release.

As in so many other areas, Bricsys proves to Autodesk that it doesn’t have to be like that; there is a better way.

Steve: Speaking to your people, they appear to like working here and they stick around. What’s your staff turnover like?

Mark: It’s very low, very low.

Erik: Job-hoppers, you mean? People who leave? I think in the last fifteen years… maybe five, six, something like that?

Steve: Wow.

Mark: I remember the reasons, maybe two or three times here, maybe having to leave to move to another city or another country. There as well, we try to find solutions.

We really have a good team atmosphere and if those people can work, if they’re a developer for example, people can work from remote areas. We have a guy who has been working for us for years who is now working from Turkey. That was the discussion we had, “I have to leave because I’m moving to Turkey now.” No, you don’t have to leave, just work from there.

Erik: I will add that in Novosibirsk (Bricsys Russia) it’s more difficult to keep the people. We are growing very fast there. We started when we took over the LEDAS team with 3D modelling, we started there with six or seven people. We now have thirty. Along the road for the last four or five years, maybe five or six left. In percentage, that’s way more than we have here. We are stopping the bleeding now!

Steve: That’s still fairly low!

Erik: That’s still fairly low but every time somebody leaves the company that’s really, really bad. We are investing a lot in making it comfortable for our people. To give you an idea we have a culture here of every Friday, we go to the pizzeria for lunch here. We have our own floor there in the restaurant every Friday. Sometimes we talk about software but sometimes we talk about politics and sometimes just rubbish and nonsense and a lot of fun.

Mark: Mostly!

Erik: But we give a budget to all our teams. In Novosibirsk they do that as well. So they have a budget and we force, well, encourage them very strongly to do that.

Mark: Same in Singapore, [inaudible], all our teams.

Erik: Every year, with all the families, we go to a chateau near Paris for three to four days. In Novosibirsk they have a budget to go for a trip with their families once a year, if there is a special occasion. That’s investing in your people.

If anyone has a problem, everyone knows that all doors are open, that we will try to find a solution to make you comfortable. We always say to our people here that the last thing we want is if they are stressed. It doesn’t work for developers and for a company like ours. No stress.

I was really sorry with Dieter yesterday [one of the presenters at the press event]. They only told him the day before to give a presentation! He’s not used to doing that. He was really good about it as you all saw, but he was really stressed. We will avoid putting him in that situation ever, ever again. It doesn’t work.

But for the rest, even with deadlines, we change priorities then, but we don’t want people stressed. And that has a very good result. If you see where we are coming from, what we have, in fifteen years, millions and millions of lines of code, of testing code as well, it’s a ton of development that is done, quality that we have developed. So far, so good, without stressing our guys. Why would we change that?

Mark: Also, the transparency we show to the outside world with the bug reports and so on, that’s also done internally. Everything here is open. On a quarterly basis we get everyone together, we show the numbers, it’s no secret at all internally. So everyone knows how the company is going, how things are moving, new projects that we are doing, and that feels nice with people.

This is the complete set of links to this interview series:

The big Bricsys interview 2 – making money

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This is one of a series of posts covering an extensive interview with Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh. In this post, I ask about Bricsys’ profitability and growth.

Steve: Do you publish your numbers?

Erik: No we don’t. We are a private company.

Steve: Can you give us an indication of what’s happening with your sales at the moment?

Erik: Last year we grew in revenue 25%. First quarter this year was up 27% over the same quarter last year. If you compare the sales in total of 2016 compared with 2015, it was 25% in growth. It means that the growth is going faster and faster and faster. That’s what we expect normally as well.

This is without any sales to Intergraph. We expect that the Intergraph deal will have an impact on our growth for sure. Mark as COO is responsible for sales and managing of that network. [To Mark] And I see you’re very occupied!

Mark: That whole Intergraph network is coming to us. It’s huge.

Erik: It’s more than doubling what we have, on sales partners.

Mark: Just to add to the numbers, we are very profitable: 24, 25%. We have very good profitability which is also significant. We’re not burning money.

Erik: Year after year.

Steve: So you’re making money every year and that’s increasing every year?

Erik: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The percentage is always around 24-25% but as we’re increasing revenue it becomes exponential.

Mark: We started in 2002 and I think we have always been profitable.

Erik: I think the first two years are what we call a black zero. We have started with an investor, but we have always kept a majority within the company. I won’t give the total shareholders but you must know that most of the people here, if somebody works here two years they get stock options and becomes a shareholder. The goal is we always keep the majority with the employees and the management.

We have a good partner investor. He’s satisfied with the growth, of course. There’s no big deal.

This is the complete set of links to this interview series:

The big Bricsys interview 1 – why invite the press?

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This is the first in a series of posts covering an extensive interview with Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh.

On April 26 and 27, I attended Bricsys Insights, a press event in Ghent, Belgium. Other attendees included Cyrena Respini-Irwin (Cadalyst editor in chief), R.K. McSwain (CAD Panacea), Ralph Grabowski (upFront.eZine), Randall Newton (GraphicSpeak), Roopinder Tara (Engineering.com), Martyn Day (DEVELOP3D), Jeff Rowe (AEC Café), Anthony Frausto-Robledo (Architosh) and Paul Wilkinson (pwcom).

Although Bricsys has invited some of these people (including myself) to previous events, this was the first gathering of such a significant number of illustrious industry press, bloggers and observers. So when myself, Cyrena Respini-Irwin and R.K. McSwain had the opportunity to interview Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser and COO Mark Van Den Bergh, the first thing that we asked was this:

Cyrena (clarifying earlier question): What was the change that led you to bring in more people for the press event?

Steve: Why are we here?

Erik/Mark: (Laughs)

Cyrena: That’s a big question!

Erik: If you look to the history of what we have done and it goes together with what we said in the beginning, that we chose to grow by organic growth, and for a long time we didn’t do any marketing, and especially for the American market, because if you do it too early… And really, if we had done that massively, five years ago we would have been categorized as just another clone of AutoCAD. Once you have that, it’s very difficult to leave that, and that’s exactly what we wanted to avoid.

And so we waited until we had really substantially different product technologies that add a lot of stuff to… if you compare it to AutoCAD, I think that’s the moment where we are now. And we decided from that moment on, probably it made sense that we tell it a little bit more to the world. And of course what do you do then? You invite influencers in the market, which is the journalists. That’s the reason we invited you all.

We’re going to repeat this more and more.

Mark: Just to add to that, just sitting here for just two days with you guys also helps us to really talk about everything. If you go to a conference (you [Steve] were also in Munich), the time is limited and so we don’t show the systems behind, the testing system, we cannot show everything.

The idea here was, OK, these are the things we’re doing, what you see of course but also what is behind, the people behind the DNA of the company. We thought that’s a good idea to do that in depth with an audience like you guys.

Erik: That’s an important element as well that we wanted to show: the DNA of the company. It’s a bit different from others. That’s who we are and it’s important to know.

Steve: You’re about 90% developers, programmers. Do you think that’s going to change as you put more effort into marketing?

Erik: I think that the awesome part of the company that has to be improved, and on the marketing side we’re going to need to improve… to give you a rough idea we think that over the next two, four years we’re probably going to grow to maybe 200-250 people.

Steve: So where are you now?

Erik: We’re at 130-140. We just hired six new developers here in the office last week so we have to recount where we are in total. Dmitri is hiring in Novosibirsk (Bricsys Russia) as well.

So for sure we are starting what I would call a second life now. There’s been a lot of development, but still the majority of people in our company will be developers. I think we’re always going to stay around 80% developers. But there’s a part of the business, and especially in the marketing, that we will have to improve.

What we have encountered now, with the new modelling techniques we have introduced for BIM, we have to teach all the resellers. We have to produce material to teach the people how to work with it. These are not developers we’re going to need. We’re going to need seasoned architects that have experience for the last six to ten years with BIM already, maybe with competitive products. But that understand the concept, have experience with it, those guys we are now attracting and we’re going to need. Those are not developers, but in that sphere we have to extend and we have to grow. And that’s what we’re doing. We are hiring.

The focus will always be… what we’re good at, is basic research and development. That’s really what we’re doing, that’s the focus, and the results are the products we make.

We have a good partnership network I think, we’re going to continue to feed that, so I expect that balance between developers and non-developers to remain always above or about 80%.

If you have a look at the system, how we sell and support our products, we are scalable, to maintain that balance of a high level of developers. There’s no need for us to change that model. But in certain aspects we’re going to have to extend.

BOA (Bricsys Online Administration) is helping us tremendously to be scalable. If we were to double our revenue we wouldn’t need that many more people to manage that. We are constantly investing in automating all the systems we have, and it pays off big-time.

Cyrena: So that very heavy R&D investment you’ve sustained thus far will be scaled back a little in order to invest in other areas such as marketing?

Erik: Yeah, but it doesn’t mean we will scale back from development. We will grow in development as well, but the balance will be a little bit different; the proportion is different. We will grow tremendously, even more still in R&D when it comes to number of developers than in any other area over any other field or kind of employee that we have.

This is the complete set of links to this interview series:

Disclosure: Bricsys covered travel and accommodation expenses and provided some meals. Oh, and beer. Mustn’t forget the Belgian beer.

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 3

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In this third post in what was supposed to be a two-part series, I have more to say about the BricsCAD documentation system. See here for part 1 and here for part 2.

Developer Help – Addendum

In this comment from Bricsys API person Torsten Moses, he informed me about the availability of the Lisp Developer Support Package (LDSP) in the Bricsys Application Catalog. As always, when presented with new evidence I am prepared to re-examine my position on anything. Therefore, I will now further discuss the BricsCAD developer documentation.

The first thing to mention is that the existence of the LDSP package is not obvious. To somebody who uses BricsCAD as-provided and as goes burrowing down through the Help system looking for information, that system is still broken. The documentation as presented to the user remains sub-standard, exactly as described in part 2.

Assuming you know of the existence of LDSP, how do you go about using it? Here are the steps:

  • Go to the Bricsys Application Catalog site, click in the search field and start typing LDSP (you don’t need to hit Enter).
  • The link to the Lisp Developer Support Package (LDSP) will appear: click that.
  • Enter your email address, accept the privacy agreement and pick Download. (Note in passing that this is actually published by Torsten’s own company, not Bricsys).

  • If you’re already a registered Bricsys user (you will be if you’re evaluating it), the download will start. If not, you’ll be expected to register (free):

  • Once you’re registered, the download results in a 12 MB file called Lisp Developer Support Package.rar (RAR is a ZIP-like format).

Any recent commercial ZIP utility (e.g. WinZip) will open RAR files and there are a variety of freeware/adware/shareware utilities available to do likewise. For example, RAR Opener in the Windows Store will present itself as the first option in Windows 10. But it goes without saying that going off in a hunt for utilities wouldn’t be on anyone’s expected to-do list when just looking for product help. A bunch of people would give up here, if not earlier.

I went through with installing RAR Opener, but when I attempted to open the LDSP file I saw this:

Oh, and a handful of empty folders were produced. Is there an email waiting for me at work with the password (my Bricsys registration email is at work but I’m at home)? Am I really supposed to have a password to open this RAR? If so, why wasn’t I prompted for one? RAR Opener doesn’t present me with that option anywhere I can see. Is the download corrupt? Does it refuse to work on a Sunday? I have no idea.

At this stage, many more would give up. How many prospective customers would be filtered out by this experience? There’s no way of knowing. However, I’m made of sterner stuff and persevered with downloading and installing another app from the Windows Store. 9 zip did the job and uncompressed the file, no password required.

Yes, the RAR Opener problem I had above isn’t a Bricsys problem directly. But it is indirectly, because the file I was given to deal with won’t open by default in Windows, where the vast majority of BricsCAD users will be working. It’s a level of obfuscation that you can get away with when dealing with cellar-dwelling geeks handling obscure pieces of open source software. It’s not appropriate for customer-facing documentation in a mainstream CAD application. Yes, even developer documentation, because with CAD applications like AutoCAD and BricsCAD, most of the developers are customers/users/managers, not people trying to sell utilities.

Once you manage to get the file uncompressed (it becomes 41 MB), there are three help systems provided in there (CHM, PDF, HTML). That’s excellent, and conforms nicely with the Bricsys philosophy of providing customers with choice. I was unable to find any broken links. However, even in the LDSP, standard AutoLISP functions are undocumented. So I still couldn’t find the (entget) help I was looking for in part 2:

According to Torsten:

…the standard AutoLISP functions like (entget) are not documented, as there are plenty docs on the web for this; but we document any extension beyond AutoLISP standard, even for the standard functions.

Sorry, but while “we don’t have that information but you can Google it” might have been an acceptable answer for a cheap AutoCAD clone’s API documentation ten years ago, that’s not where BricsCAD is today and most definitely where Bricsys wants it to be in future. Just two days ago, Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser sat across a table from me and told me that BricsCAD isn’t intended as merely an AutoCAD alternative, but must go well beyond that in order to prosper. He’s right. The BricsCAD developer documentation today is not compatible with that vision. I know it’s that way for historical reasons, but we’re now at a different point in the historical timeline.

Conclusion – Addendum

My conclusion from Part 2 remains valid, despite the existence of LDSP. Both Autodesk and Bricsys have work to do. Downloading LDSP will help with some of the BricsCAD developer documentation failings but leaves plenty behind. It also provides its own set of unfortunate challenges.

This isn’t just a technical and ease-of-use failing, it’s a marketing one. That’s because it acts as a stumbling block to conversion of AutoCAD sites to BricsCAD. Disaffected AutoCAD power users in small sites and CAD Managers from large sites are right now taking tentative steps to evaluate the suitability of BricsCAD to replace AutoCAD in their complex LISP-heavy custom environments. They’ll want to know what’s the same and what’s different so they can estimate the effort and cost involved in the transition before getting in too deep. I know this, because I’ve done it myself. The first thing they will come across in their search is disjointed, very inconvenient and incomplete. It presents a less-than-professional image.

Some potential customers, like me, will persevere and discover that the quality of the developer tools implementation far exceeds the expectation generated by the documentation. Others will give up well before they reach that stage, and that’s a shame.

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 2

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In this pair of posts, I describe the BricsCAD documentation system. Click here for part 1, where I describe the general Help system and the descriptions in the Settings command.

In this part, I discuss developer documentation and draw my conclusions.

Developer Help

If we count the Settings descriptions as a system, there’s a third documentation system for BricsCAD. The Developer Reference isn’t offline and included in an install like the main Help. Instead, it’s online, just like Autodesk’s default. Unlike Autodesk’s system, it works pretty well.

Being online means the performance suffers, of course, but it’s generally not too bad. It appears quicker than Autodesk’s. A link within the main Help system takes you to the Bricsys Developer Reference which is just accessed using your default browser. Of course, that means your mouse buttons work correctly and you have all other the advantages of whatever functionality is built into your browser.

Hot tip: you can get to a real browser from within the AutoCAD pseudo-browser thing too, by right-clicking on a link and picking Open in Browser. The URL takes a while to mangle and unmangle itself before you get to read any content, but you get there in the end.

Unlike the general Help, the BricsCAD developer Help system isn’t so obviously superior to its AutoCAD equivalent. This is largely thanks to the outstanding efforts of Autodesk’s Lee Ambrosius who has managed to take Autodesk’s pig’s ear of a system and produce perhaps not a silk purse but at least a decent-quality cloth bag. It can’t have been easy.

Like the main Help, the BricsCAD online developer reference has a Contents mode with structure:

There’s an Index:

And there’s Search:

As the last image shows, the system contains not only missing information (where’s the (entget) description?) but also broken links; this wasn’t the only 404 I came across. That’s a bit embarrassing, Bricsys. There’s a lot of work to be done yet to bring this up to scratch.

There’s no Favorites section, but of course that’s built into your browser so it would be pointless reproducing that.

Of course, you can’t get context-sensitive help on functions within your LISP code from VLIDE, because BricsCAD has no VLIDE.

Conclusion

The BricsCAD documentation system is notably better than the AutoCAD one in many ways. However, it’s a long way short of perfect. Many aspects need attention, and there are multiple holes to be filled. Sometimes I find myself forced to use AutoCAD’s general documentation system to find out something about a system variable that’s common to both systems. That shouldn’t be necessary.

I’ve hardly mentioned the content of the respective documentation systems, but I must say Autodesk’s content is often superior (thanks, Dieter). But there are exceptions; the BricsCAD descriptions and pictures of various commands and options are better in some cases. For example, try to find out what the various options of the PEdit command do in both systems. With BricsCAD, it’s all laid out on one page and nicely linked.

The AutoCAD command documentation has been pared down too much in places to make each page shorter and simpler, hiding the content beneath sometimes obscure links. It’s possible to find out what the Pedit options do in AutoCAD, but it’s certainly not BricsCAD-easy and I initially gave up after chasing my tail for a while. I went back and found it later, but it took a lucky guess. Giving up after looking through a circular set of links is a common experience with AutoCAD’s Help. There’s a programming concept called mutual recursion, but I don’t want to experience it during a vain search in a Help system, thanks. A visible, navigable structure would help eliminate that issue, but there isn’t one. There needs to be one. Did I mention that already?

With system variables, BricsCAD’s Help is consistently and clearly inferior to AutoCAD’s. The AutoCAD content also tends to be better worded, with the BricsCAD wording being occasionally slightly awkward in a non-native-English-speaking manner. There are also some formatting issues with wide gaps left where the system attempts to expand command descriptions to the right margin and does a poor job of it.

As with AutoCAD, there are many video tutorials available for BricsCAD. I have not considered these in my evaluation but the few I had a look at were pretty good.

Who wins? Nobody. It’s a draw. Both companies need to step up. Autodesk mainly with its awful structure-free system, Bricsys mainly with its incomplete content, particularly for developers. But both companies have work to do in all areas.

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 1

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Because of the great similarity between BricsCAD and AutoCAD in terms of commands, variables and most aspects of usage, you would expect the BricsCAD documentation to be about the same too. But it isn’t. Much of the content covers the same areas and due to BricsCAD’s command-line compatibility, there must be a lot in common. But the Help system is very different from Autodesk’s. How so?

In this pair of posts, I describe the BricsCAD documentation system. I assume you’re familiar with the AutoCAD one. In this first part, I describe the general Help system and the descriptions in the Settings command. In part 2, I will discuss developer documentation and draw my conclusions.

General Help

The general Help system in BricsCAD looks a lot like the excellent CHM-based system that AutoCAD had in 2010 and earlier (thanks, Dieter). BricsCAD’s Help is offline by default, included with the standard download and installation, and very fast. Those are great things to have, and AutoCAD lacks them all. But the great thing about the BricsCAD Help system is that it supports different usage patterns, rather than Autodesk’s search-or-nothing method. Rather than telling users that they are expected to use Help in one specific way, Bricsys accommodates their disparate wishes. As usual, the customer-friendly way is the winner.

The BriscCAD system looks a lot more old-fashioned than the AutoCAD one. I don’t care about that. I do care about space-efficiency though, and BricsCAD is the winner there. You can of course resize the dialog and the size of the left pane.

There’s a Contents tab which allows you to navigate the hierarchical structure in which the information is arranged. That’s useful not only when looking for something in particular, but also when using the system as a self-teaching mechanism by working through an area and related topics. AutoCAD completely lacks such a structure.

There’s an Index tab that lists the indexed items in alphabetical order. You can start typing and the indexed items instantly change to reflect what you’ve typed, which is much more efficient than Autodesk’s system. AutoCAD 2018 Help does include an alphabetical list of commands and system variables in both online and offline versions, but it doesn’t give access to all of the topics.

There’s a Search tab that allows you to enter a search term and have several suggestions thrown up. Unlike Autodesk’s system, the suggestions are displayed in a space-efficient manner. Unfortunately, like Autodesk’s search, the suggestions displayed often differ from what you’re after. Even hitting F1 within a command doesn’t take you straight to the page for that command. In PEdit, the F1 visible suggestions don’t include the PEdit command page! It’s there, but needs a scroll down. That really needs work.

There’s also a Favorites tab where you can save and restore any pages you want to go back to.

But that hierarchical structure is the big winner. Destroying that structure in the AutoCAD 2011 pseudo-browser Help debacle and leaving it broken for seven further releases has to rank among the silliest self-destructive acts Autodesk has ever performed on AutoCAD. Because Bricsys never made that mistake, its general Help system is superior to AutoCAD’s. Until Autodesk throws away its flat-structure mindset and starts again, it has no hope of catching up to the BricsCAD system.

Oh, and your mouse’s forward and back buttons work in the BricsCAD system. How long have we been nagging Autodesk about that? Seriously, how hard could that be?

It’s not all good, though. As mentioned at the top, the AutoCAD content is generally superior. There are also quite a few holes. Enter a system variable at the command line and hit F1. You would expect to get context-sensitive information about that system variable. You don’t. You’re just taken rather uselessly to the “Welcome to BricsCAD” page. This needs attention to ensure context-sensitive help is available for all commands and system variables.

Fire up Help, pick the Index tab and start typing in a system variable name. In most cases, you’ll find it’s not in the list (e.g. FILEDIA). In cases where a system variable name does appear in the list (e.g. FILLMODE), double-clicking on it doesn’t take you to a description of the system variable. Instead, you will be presented with multiple topics and it’s often not clear which is the system variable description.

Settings Descriptions

For system variables and most other settings, you’re better off avoiding the main Help system altogether. Instead, use the Settings command. This is like Options in AutoCAD but superior, because it’s all there and arranged much more logically. You can navigate a hierarchical structure to find the setting you want, but you can also type part of the setting name or a related word into the search box at the top of the dialog. If that doesn’t take you immediately to the setting you’re after, you can use the up and down arrows to go to the next match. It’s all very quick and efficient.

Unlike AutoCAD’s Options, you don’t need to go hunting from tab to tab, visually scanning the dialog for the setting you want, which might be hidden under a button or not there at all. Also far superior to AutoCAD, the descriptions don’t hover over the dialog, obscuring what you’re looking at. Dieter has been hacking the AutoCAD dialog hover-tips down in size for years, but they still annoy the heck out of me until I turn them off.

When you find the setting you’re after, a brief description is displayed at the bottom of the dialog. In most cases, this has just the right amount of information you need without having to read through a whole page. If it doesn’t, in some cases it will tell you the setting name. However, this is missing in many cases.

This is a “could do better” area for Bricsys. Somebody needs to go through these descriptions, fill the holes (not a small job) and make them all consistent. While they are at it, get them to tie up all of the missing context-sensitive loose ends in the main system. Better still, provide a button or other method within Settings to take the user to the appropriate Help page. Currently, pressing F1 within the Settings command will give you useful but generic information about using the dialog. Unfortunately, it will not give you information about the setting you want to check or change. That needs to happen.

Click here for Part 2.

Bloatware – a tale of two installations

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In a previous post, I showed that AutoCAD is bloatware by comparing the size of its downloads to that of BricsCAD. Obviously, an application that’s ten times the size it should be is going to cost you a lot of unnecessary bandwidth, download time and drive space. But maybe you don’t care about that. What practical difference does it make?

Well, for one thing, the blimping-out of Autodesk’s former flagship product has a big effect on installation time. Vast and ever-increasing amounts of time are wasted by users of Autodesk products, just waiting for the things to finish installing. But isn’t this just the inevitable price to pay for the functionality provided?

No. Again, BricsCAD proves it.

The installation comparison is shown below. These installations were performed on a mid-range Windows 10 i7 PC with 8 GB RAM. The downloaded files were executed from a local hard drive and the applications were installed to a local SSD. If I needed to enter information manually, I stopped the clock while that was going on. Times are the total elapsed time from commencement in minutes and seconds. More user input was required for the AutoCAD install, but that has not been counted in this comparison. That is, by eliminating the human input stages I’m being kind to Autodesk.

I performed a complete default installation of BricsCAD. In the case of AutoCAD, I turned off the installation of Recap and A360 Desktop to make for a fair comparison, as equivalents are not part of the BricsCAD install and those components are not required by the average CAD user. Everything else was as per default settings.

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Installation
Installation Operation
 Timestamp
Execute BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi 0:00
Prompt for questions 0:03
Click Yes for UAC Allow 0:14
Installation complete, start application 0:35
First run startup 0:40
Total time from install to ready to draw
 0:40 (100%)

That’s astonishingly fast. Remember, this is an application that is more capable than AutoCAD overall. How does installing AutoCAD itself compare?

Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 64-bit Windows Installation
Installation Operation
 Timestamp
Execute AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe 0:00
Self-extractor finishes initializing 2:46
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow 4:56
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper 5:04
Desktop icon appears 8:10
Install complete, restart required 10:21
Restart complete, start application 11:41
Activation begins 12:05
Activation complete 12:21
Close AutoCAD, execute AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe 12:25
Self-extractor finishes initializing 14:44
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow 14:54
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper 14:57
Offline Help installation complete, execute AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe 15:44
2018.0.1 install complete, start AutoCAD 16:50
Second startup complete 17:18
Total time from install to ready to draw
 17:18 (2595%)

Installed sizes are roughly 0.5 GB for BricsCAD and 2.4 GB for AutoCAD. It’s hard to be exact because Autodesk likes to perform multiple installs when one is requested and tends to squirrel away various components in a variety of places. Here are the ten(!) new entries in Add or Remove Programs after just the first stage of the AutoCAD install:

OK, so maybe AutoCAD takes 26 times as long as BricsCAD to install. But the AutoCAD installation images are so much prettier than the plain old BricsCAD dialogs! Shall we call it a draw?

No.

Autodesk, you took a real pounding here. Bricsys chewed you up, spat you out, ground the chewings into the dust, set fire to the remains and then put out the fire with bodily fluids. Sorry, but you deserve it. Your installations have been ridiculously slow for years and are getting worse. Installing a vertical product or suite is beyond a joke; it makes even the AutoCAD install look speedy. It’s not good enough.

Bloatware – a tale of two CAD applications

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You may have seen me mention in passing that AutoCAD is bloatware. That’s not just the general grumpy-old-user moan you see from long-term users like me, who can remember when AutoCAD used to fit on one floppy disk.

Yes, programs get bigger over time as new functionality is added and old functionality needs to be retained. Hardware gets bigger, better, faster over time to compensate for that. I get that. Understood.

The AutoCAD bloatware problem is much more than that. AutoCAD is literally ten times the size it needs to be, to provide the functionality it does.

How do I know? BricsCAD proves it. Here’s what I mean.

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Download
Downloaded File Size (KB)
BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi 248,812
Total (1 file) 248,812 (100%)
Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 Downloads
Downloaded File Size (KB)
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe 2,065,829
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_002_002.sfx.exe 328,277
AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe 120,663
AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe 180,013
Total (4 files) 2,694,782 (1083%)

Which dog is which? They’re both cute, but which would you put your money on in a race?

(Original image: Przykuta)

(Original image: Lisa Cyr)

I’m actually being very generous to Autodesk in this comparison. The two primary AutoCAD download executables alone expand from 2.4 GB to 5.2 GB before install, requiring a total at least 7.6 GB of disk space before we even get to the same ready-to-install point as BricsCAD’s 0.24 GB MSI file.

No, it’s not because BricsCAD is a cut-down application compared with AutoCAD. The opposite is true. Overall, BricsCAD is significantly more feature-rich than AutoCAD. It near-exactly duplicates over 95% of AutoCAD’s functionality and then adds a big slab of its own on top of that. Some of it is in paid-for optional extras, but the code that provides that functionality is still included in the same small download.

This issue isn’t unique to AutoCAD. Super-morbid obesity seems to be standard among Autodesk products. The AutoCAD-based verticals that add a comparable level of functionality to that the BricsCAD download includes are much bigger again!

Anybody care to explain what’s going on here?

Bricsys shows Autodesk how to do mid-term updates

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BricsCAD V17.2 is out. Although there’s nowhere near as much new and useful in this mid-term update as in the full upgrade from V16 to V17, there’s more here than in Autodesk’s last mid-term update, AutoCAD 17.1. There’s even arguably more than in the uninspired AutoCAD 2018 upgrade, including those 17.1 features.

But that’s not the main reason I say Bricsys is schooling Autodesk in how to do mid-term updates. While Autodesk is restricting such updates (including the bug fixes and security updates included in those updates) to subscription and maintenance customers, Bricsys is doing no such thing.

BricsCAD V17 customers who have a perpetual license, even without maintenance (called All-In by Bricsys), will be receiving V17.2 free of charge. Bricsys still considers such users as customers who have paid good money and still need to be looked after, rather than a non-paying irritant, which appears to be Autodesk’s attitude.

Oh, and you don’t have to install some piece-of-junk automatic updater or malware-like download manager to get the software. You just do a straightforward browser download of a small file (by Autodesk bloatware standards) which is the entire product, and install over the top of your existing installation, effortlessly preserving your settings. If you’re doing a new install of V17.2 from scratch, you just install from that downloaded product. No need for multiple downloads and multiple-step installations. No need to have every PC in your fleet nagging your users and downloading the same huge files.

Autodesk isn’t in the hunt here for ease of maintenance. Not remotely in the same league. Seriously, go home and start again, Autodesk. Your ideas are bad and your execution is worse.

Here are some links to information about the V17.2 update (not neutral sources, obviously):

I will be benchmarking BricsCAD V17.2 and AutoCAD 2018 with great interest. In my preliminary tests, BricsCAD V17.0 performance walked all over AutoCAD 2018 in most areas, but commands involving object selection were the exception, with AutoCAD significantly quicker there. Bricsys is claiming large improvements in that area, but we’ll see.

BricsCAD’s LISP kicks sand in the face of AutoCAD’s

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If you’re a power user or CAD Manager transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD, one of the things you’ll like is that almost all of your LISP routines will just work. That’s not an statement that can be made about various Autodesk products that bear the AutoCAD name, such as AutoCAD 360, AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD for Mac.

It’s not just simple old AutoLISP code that runs in BricsCAD, but complex dialog routines that use DCL, and Visual LISP stuff that uses ActiveX. Yes, even on the Mac and Linux platforms. Some DOSLib functions are built in and the rest can be loaded, as with AutoCAD. Even OpenDCL is supported. It’s a quite astonishingly high level of compatibility.

But it’s not 100%. There are minor incompatibilities, system variable and command-line differences that cause problems in a handful of cases. It’s often possible to work around these and still retain the same code that works in both AutoCAD and BricsCAD. Reporting LISP bugs and incompatibilities to Bricsys generally gets them fixed super-quick.

Also super-quick is the speed at which your code will run. It’s immediately noticeable when running any LISP code that needs to do a bit of processing that it just gets done faster in BricsCAD than AutoCAD. Fast enough to extract the following comment from one of my AutoCAD users trying out a linework cleanup routine in BricsCAD:

Wow.

 
User impressions are one thing, but how about measurements? Today, I had a support job to do that involved running one of my LISP routines. I ran it on both AutoCAD 2017 and BricsCAD V17 on the same PC. AutoCAD took 2970 seconds (about 49 minutes), BricsCAD 1030 seconds (about 17 minutes). Over half an hour saved on one operation. That’s 2.88 times faster, which is consistent with my previous observations with a variety of routines.

Upshot: if you’re doing work where there’s a lot of LISP processing going on, switching to BricsCAD is going to save you a shedload of time.

There is a downside to BricsCAD’s LISP, and it’s a big one; no VLIDE. No equivalent, either. There are various programming editors around that can help with editing code, but no substitute for integrated debugging. It means if you’re a power user, CAD Manager, developer or support person, you’re probably going to have to keep one working copy of AutoCAD around even after you’ve completed the transition to BricsCAD.

Because VLIDE has been in maintenance mode for over 15 years it remains virtually unchanged year after year (including ancient bugs). So it doesn’t matter that much which AutoCAD release you have hanging around. Assuming you’re a perpetual license holder, when you drop the maintenance contract on one of your AutoCAD licenses, you’re entitled to keep using the software as long as you wish, albeit only the current release at the time the contract ends. How long the software will keep working is another matter, depending as it does on factors not entirely within your control.

This is an imperfect solution. Even keeping a copy of AutoCAD around won’t help much if you’re debugging a problem caused by something specific to BricsCAD. Filling the VLIDE hole is something Bricsys needs to work on.

Undo, U, Redo, Erase, Oops differences explained

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It’s been a while since I posted any beginners’ tips, so here goes.

There are several commands in AutoCAD to do with reversing things you’ve done. They are in some cases subtly different and this can confuse newcomers. Here’s what they do:

  • U – reverses the last command you used.
  • Redo – reverses the last U or Undo operation you performed, if that’s the last thing you did.
  • Undo – displays a set of command options that allow greater control over undoing things. (This is rarely used directly by a user, and is more of a programmer’s tool, so I won’t be going into any detail).
  • Erase – removes from the drawing an object or set of objects as selected by the user.
  • Oops – reverses the last Erase command, even if you have done other things in the meantime. (It also reverses erasures performed by the Wblock command, but such reversal is rarely needed these days).

Note that many commands also have an Undo subcommand  which is different again from all of the above. For example, start the Line command, pick a few points, then enter Undo while still in the command. Just the last segment will be removed, and you can carry on picking more points. Most subcommands can be abbreviated, and this is true of the Undo subcommand within the Line command. While still in the Line command, enter U and this will have the same effect as entering Undo in full (or the other possible abbreviations Un and Und).

This is not the case when entering full command names; entering U and Undo at the command prompt will do different things, although command line auto-complete can confuse matters further depending on your settings. I’ll ignore that for the sake of brevity.

Let’s go through a command sequence that uses all of these things.

  • Enter the Line command (type LINE and hit [Enter]). Pick 6 points to create 5 lines but don’t hit [Enter] yet. While still in the Line command, enter Undo (UNDO [Enter]). This will use the Undo subcommand of Line to undo the last drawn line segment, leaving 4 lines. Pick another 2 points, leaving a total of 6 lines. While still in the Line command, enter U. This will undo the last drawn line segment, leaving 5 lines. Hit [Enter] to finish the Line command.
  • Enter the Line command, pick 4 points to draw 3 lines and hit Enter to finish the command.
  • Enter the U command. The effects of the last command (Line) will be undone, removing all 3 of the lines created by it.
  • Enter the Redo command. The U command is reversed, restoring the 3 lines.
  • Enter the Undo command. This will give you a few options, but the default is the number of steps to undo. Type 2 [Enter] and the last 2 commands will be undone (ignoring the U/Redo), removing the set of 3 lines and the set of 5 lines.
  • Enter the Redo command. The Undo command is reversed, restoring both the 5 lines and the 3 lines.*
  • Enter the Erase command. Select one line from the first group and two from the second, then hit [Enter] to finish the command and those 3 lines go away.
  • Enter the Move command. Select the remaining 2 lines from the first group, hit [Enter] to finish the selection process and pick two points slightly apart to move the lines a short distance.
  • Enter the Oops command. The 3 lines removed by the Erase command are restored, but note that the effects of the Move command are unaffected. If you had used the U command twice to restore the erased lines, the Move command would also have been reversed.

Clear as mud? There are other possible complications depending on various settings, and there are various user interface options for invoking the commands that I haven’t discussed, but this will do to explain the basics.

* The information in this post applies to any AutoCAD from the last 30 years, but as the command set in BricsCAD is almost identical, it can be used for BricsCAD too. Mostly. There is one exception; if you use Undo to perform several undo steps at once, then follow that with a Redo, only one undo step at a time will be reversed. If you want to redo everything, you will need to hold your finger on the Enter key to repeat the Redo command until it runs out of things to redo. Depending on what you want to do, this can either be very handy or rather inconvenient.

BricsCAD startup LISP bug fixed

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In my previous post I have a real problem with BricsCAD, I related my then-latest interaction with the Bricsys support system:

Steve Johnson
05-12-2016 05:30 UTC
I don’t know if this is a BricsCAD problem or a DOSLib one, so I am reporting it to both Bricsys and Dale at McNeel. I’m also not sure if this was happening in earlier versions.

If I load DOSLib during an S::STARTUP call and then use the (dos_msgbox) function later in that call, this fails the first time round because BricsCAD things the function is not defined. Opening a second drawing results in the call working as expected. I’ve chopped down our startup routine so you have an example.

; error : no function definition ; expected FUNCTION at [eval]

Awesome Bricsys Person
05-12-2016 12:32 UTC
Hi Steve,

There was a regression introduced in V17.1.10 that caused startup code to execute too early under certain conditions, before the lisp engine document context was properly initialized. This has been fixed now for the next update.

Steve Johnson
06-12-2016 02:43 UTC
I must say, the responses I’ve been getting to my support requests have been absolutely bloody brilliant. Cheers!

Let’s just finish the sequence, shall we?

Second Excellent Bricsys Person
13-12-2016 19:18 UTC
Hi Steve,

I have very good news. The fix is included in BricsCAD V17.1.11, available for download.
Thank you for your help.

Following a fast and straightforward download and install, I can confirm that the bug is fixed. The elapsed time from my bug report to the fix being publicly available and me being informed personally of the fact was 8.5 days. Note that this isn’t a workaround, patch or service pack, it’s a permanent fix that is now automatically in place for everybody who downloads the software.

Edit: the new version was actually released at 4 PM on 9 December, so it was less than 4.5 days from report to fix. Outstanding!

I should mention that I also received a prompt and relevant response from Dale at McNeel, despite the fact that the problem was nothing to do with him!

For somebody used to dealing with Autodesk, this is a breath of fresh air. Bricsys team, take a bow!

I have a real problem with BricsCAD

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To be precise, I have a real problem with writing  about BricsCAD. I’ve written some pretty complimentary things about BricsCAD lately. In the interests of balance, I’ve been intending to write about some of the issues people can expect to deal with when moving from AutoCAD to BricsCAD. Such issues certainly exist. The problem I have with that is that the issues keep going away!

Here’s how it usually goes. I find a problem in BricsCAD. I submit a support request. Within hours, I get a meaningful response from a person who understands the issue. Within days, I’m informed it’s been fixed internally and the fix will be in the next update. Within a week or two, that update is released. I download and install the updated version. It’s basically a full reinstall, but all settings are seamlessly retained and it’s faster and less painful than an AutoCAD Service Pack installation. The whole thing from start of download to completion typically takes 5 or 6 minutes. The problem is gone, and I have nothing to write about!

Here’s the latest interaction. This is typical, and has been repeated many times:

Steve Johnson
05-12-2016 05:30 UTC
I don’t know if this is a BricsCAD problem or a DOSLib one, so I am reporting it to both Bricsys and Dale at McNeel. I’m also not sure if this was happening in earlier versions.

If I load DOSLib during an S::STARTUP call and then use the (dos_msgbox) function later in that call, this fails the first time round because BricsCAD things the function is not defined. Opening a second drawing results in the call working as expected. I’ve chopped down our startup routine so you have an example.

; error : no function definition ; expected FUNCTION at [eval]

Awesome Bricsys Person
05-12-2016 12:32 UTC
Hi Steve,

There was a regression introduced in V17.1.10 that caused startup code to execute too early under certain conditions, before the lisp engine document context was properly initialized. This has been fixed now for the next update.

Steve Johnson
06-12-2016 02:43 UTC
I must say, the responses I’ve been getting to my support requests have been absolutely bloody brilliant. Cheers!

 
Now, can you imagine the same scenario with Autodesk? I’m sure many of you have lived through it. First thing would be an automated response. A day or two later would be a confused support person coming up with totally unrelated links to Knowledgebase articles. A series of increasingly frustrating back-and-forth emails might go on for days or weeks until the Autodesk person finally plays their trump card, blaming the third-party routine (incorrectly) and/or stating that they don’t support users’ customization.

Such a problem would stay in AutoCAD indefinitely. Repeated reports, year after year, using subscription support and the forums and formal reporting mechanism in the Autodesk Beta program, would make no difference. Eventually I would give up and the problem would never get fixed. Again, this is typical, and has been repeated many times. This applies to bugs, incompatibilities, feature design, performance issues, user interface difficulties, documentation system idiocy, you name it. It’s massively frustrating and I know many very smart people who have given up even trying. The only exception is documentation content; that gets fixed as soon as possible, within the limitations imposed by Autodesk’s arcane systems.

The difference in attitude between Autodesk and Bricsys is glaring, stark, obvious. Autodesk pays lip service to providing customer service and software quality. Bricsys just gets on and does it.

So what’s actually new in BricsCAD V17?

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A big problem I have in communicating the improvements to BricsCAD in V17 is that there are such a huge number of them. This isn’t an AutoCAD 201x-style touch-up masquerading as serious progress, this is a real  upgrade. You know, an AutoCAD V12-style upgrade that veteran AutoCAD users will remember from the good old days before Autodesk got bored and distracted. Dozens upon dozens of new features, improvements to existing features, performance improvements and bug fixes. Lots of stuff that’s genuinely useful.

I could write three posts a week on the changes and not be finished by this time next year. So I’m going to be lazy. I’ll pick out a few features for future posts but for the big picture I’ll point you to the official list. This isn’t a marketing document, it’s a technical list of terse descriptions of changes (to the Windows version only – remember BricsCAD supports Mac and Linux too), and it’s large. To give you some idea of the scale of changes, there are 3,200 words describing new V17 features, for example:

DMDISTANCE3D Specific measuring modes for cylinders, circles, and spheres have been introduced. Distance can be specified between boundaries (nearest points), central points or axes of the corresponding geometries.

 
There are 1,600 words describing improvements, such as:

IMAGEATTACH Multiple selection of images from a single folder is supported now so multiple images can be attached in one go. This is especially useful for images with geo-information attached.

 
There are 1,450 words describing fixes, like:

MATCHPROP When the source entity was non-annotative and the target annotative, the target undesiredly remained annotative.

 
There are 1,100 words describing API changes and fixes, e.g.:

BRX/LISP/SDS wcmatch() now supports the (undocumented) space character as a pattern key to match any contiguous sequence of whitespace characters (space, tab)

 
That last one is a fix for a bug that I reported in V16. Within ten days of submitting my report, I was informed directly by the developer that the fix had been done and would be available in V17. Here’s another one of mine:

BRX/LISP Improved sds_getFiled() / (getfiled) behavior during a Save operation when default filename argument is empty.

 
Elapsed time between my report and acknowledgement by the developer that a fix would be forthcoming? Just under 12 hours. Less than 3.5 hours after that, I was informed that the fix had been implemented. Hands up all those people who have had similar experiences with Autodesk?

BricsCAD V17 – the best AutoCAD upgrade in years?

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I’ve been evaluating BricsCAD for a few years now, and have been looking at it pretty seriously as a DWG-based LISP-compatible AutoCAD alternative for a year or so. A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Munich for the Bricsys International Conference (at Bricsys’ expense – see the Legal page for disclosure) where I learned quite a few things I had failed to notice during my own evaluation of V17. As you may have noticed, I can be pretty hard-bitten and cynical about what CAD companies have to say about their products, but I came back impressed.

The conference and the product itself are not free of flaws, but I have to say the progress Bricsys has shown in developing the BricsCAD product is really quite astonishing. The rate at which serious, worthwhile-to-customers improvements have been made to BricsCAD over the last few releases is huge. Some of it’s just catching up with existing AutoCAD features, but most of it is going beyond what Autodesk has done. Overall, Bricsys lately has outstripped Autodesk’s efforts in improving its DWG-based flagship CAD product to such a degree that it’s frankly embarrassing for the much larger corporation.

I grabbed Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser for a brief chat at the end of the conference. I told him that while there were still important areas that need addressing, nevertheless if Autodesk had shipped a new release with a quarter of the improvements that Bricsys managed with V17, it would still have been the best AutoCAD upgrade in fifteen years. Yes, the gap in progress from Autodesk to Bricsys really is that big.

The difference appears to be one of attitude. The Bricsys development team (many were there in Munich to speak to) is focused, motivated and enabled. For Bricsys, BricsCAD really is the flagship product. That’s where all the effort goes; everything goes into the DWG-based product. High-performance 2D drafting, user interface innovation, parametric 3D models, IFC-certified BIM, sheet metal, everything. You would think this would lead to massive bloat, but somehow it doesn’t; the product remains small and fast.

For Autodesk, the emphasis has been elsewhere for some years now. The rate per release of worthwhile AutoCAD improvements, never stellar since the 12-month release cycle was adopted, has been trending downwards since AutoCAD 2010 and has slowed to a trickle. Autodesk is happy to accept the income from AutoCAD customers and use it to develop a hundred trendier products, neglecting the foundation on which the company was built. That’s relying on inertia, and there’s a big question mark over how sustainable that is.

Here’s a 5-minute YouTube marketing video outlining some of the changes. If you have a bit longer, here’s a 37-minute YouTube video of the new features from head of development Hans de Backer. The presentation lacks sparkle (no insult to Hans, but he’s no Lynn Allen) but the substance is there. Note that Hans was demonstrating live to the full conference using a pre-release product, including opening a huge drawing, which surely deserves marks for bravery! As a bonus, you can just about see Owen Wengerd and myself in the bottom left corner.

I’ll be going into more detail on BricsCAD V17 pros and cons later (yes, there are cons), but for now here’s the press release and here’s where you can download the product for evaluation. It’s a straightforward download of a 234 MB MSI file and the install takes just over a minute. That in itself is a breath of fresh air for people who are used to hanging around, waiting for AutoCAD downloads and installs to finish.

Congratulations to Ed Martin, who won the selfie contest with this entry:

1. This is Don Strimbu – a tricky angle on the picture, but his smile gives it away
2. He’s famous for the drawing of a nozzle – a fire hose nozzle to be precise – that he drew in 1984
3. Don used block scaling to simulate a 3D effect on the text, knurling, and fins
4. Autodesk used the drawing in its promotional material starting with an ad in the September 1984 issue of Scientific American
5. Don is now promoting products from Bricsys, notably their BricsCAD product
6. Wow, I really don’t know how long it took him, and it would be cheating to ask him … so I’ll guess. 18 hours?

Some clarifications:

1. Indeed it is Don. It was a privilege to meet him at the recent Bricsys International Conference in Munich, among other notables.

2. Correct, NOZZLE.DWG (we were all upper case 8.3 filenames at the time) which is quite possibly the most famous AutoCAD drawing of all time. It was the first complicated drawing ever done with AutoCAD, and was done in 1983 (not 1984), according to John Walker. See The Autodesk File for more information.

nozzle

3. Yes, it was block scaling. In addition to the 3D effect, the thing Don came up with that amazed John Walker was using negative scale factors to achieve the equivalent of the MIRROR command. That command didn’t exist at the time, along with object snap and a bunch of other things it would be difficult to imagine life without these days.

4. Yes, it was also on Autodesk’s Task Force Tips’ letterhead for a while…

5. Yes, Don and former Autodesk Senior Vice President Dr. Malcolm Davies (also at Munich) are important figures at Techevate, enthusiastic promoters of BricsCAD in the USA.

6. 18 hours is a bit off. How about 400 40?

I remember using NOZZLE.DWG as a benchmark for comparing AutoCAD hardware back in the 80s. Open the drawing, enter REGEN and see how long it takes to get a command prompt back again. As every single zoom or pan required a regeneration back then, regen time was very important. I remember an HP Vectra taking 17 seconds and an NEC APC III taking 19. An IBM PC without math co-processor took much longer; 2 minutes 39 rings a bell, but I’m not certain. These days, it’s so fast it’s hardly measurable.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what Ed has to say in this blog’s first ever guest posting. Could be anything!

Any BricsCAD users out there? v.2016

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Back in 2010 I asked the question Any BricsCAD users out there? and there were a few of you who had tried to replace AutoCAD with BricsCAD. Most who responded had made the change successfully, others not so much.

Six years on, the situation is different. The fact that you can’t buy a permanent AutoCAD license any more has prompted some Autodesk customers to look more seriously at alternative vendors who do provide that option. Bricsys is one of those vendors, and their DWG-based AutoCAD alternative BricsCAD has improved way more rapidly than AutoCAD over the same time period. No, that isn’t a guess, I’ve been keeping an active eye on things. BricsCAD today is by no means perfect, but it’s impressive in many ways. LISP compatibility and performance are excellent, for example. BricsCAD v16 superior to the also imperfect AutoCAD 2017 in several areas, despite the total cost of ownership being significantly lower.

Here’s the question I asked back then:

I would be very interested to hear from any of you who have adopted BricsCAD (either partially or fully replacing AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT in your organisation), or at least seriously investigated using the product.
 
Why did you investigate changing over? How far have you gone? What are your experiences? What are the pros and cons? How is performance? Reliability? Bugs? Ease of use? Familiarity? Support and other aspects of customer service? Total cost of ownership? Are you experiencing interoperability problems when exchanging drawings with Autodesk software users? How did you go with incorporating in-house customisation and third party tools?

How would you answer that question today? Would you be interested in me providing more posts about BriscCAD, such as practical experiences with attempting a transition from AutoCAD?