Tag Archives: Bricsys

The BLADE video watchlist

I did my third and final (for now) BricsCAD Unplugged webcast about BLADE last Wednesday. Here’s the video:

Before I dig into DCL, I start with a brief description of an absolutely brilliant feature that was added to BLADE in V19. If you code in LISP, you’ll love this feature.

Then I move on to some ancient history. Did you know that we can thank the far-sightedness of some slightly renegade Autodesk OS/2 developers in the early 1990s for the dialog boxes we use today? Did you know that you could program dialog boxes for AutoCAD for Mac in 1993 but you can’t today? Can you spot the items of interest in the background?

The rest of the video is dedicated to describing DCL programming and debugging, and I explain how BLADE is the best tool for that job using examples.

If you want to watch all three of the BLADE videos in a row (that’s 1 hour 49 minutes of viewing), Matt Olding has created a YouTube playlist for this series.

It has been an absolute pleasure working with the Bricsys people in putting this series together. Torsten Moses has informed me about yet another bunch of enhancements that are coming very soon to BLADE, so maybe you haven’t heard the last from me on this subject on BricsCAD Unplugged.

Robert Green gets a new job

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Robert Green recently made this announcement in his CAD Managers Unite Facebook group:

On March 1 I’ll be joining Bricsys (the BricsCAD company) as their Director of Implementation. That’s a fancy way of saying it’ll be my responsibility to make sure BricsCAD customers are technically and financially successful as they migrate to BricsCAD. This will involve managing everything that impacts implementation including installs, customization, best practices development and product requirements analysis. It’s going to be a different challenge for me – one I’m looking forward to.

“Why Bricsys?” you may ask?

Because I like the company, their products and their people. From the first time I visited the Bricsys offices in Gent I couldn’t help but feel their joy in building great products that do mechanical, BIM and CAD in a consistent DWG based product interface. This company is doing things that I believe will change the CAD market and I want to be part of it.

Yes, this is a big change for me but let me promise you two things will never change: My love for CAD management and my fondness for writing so you’ll still be hearing from me! If you have any questions, feel free to comment or message me directly. Here goes!

Congratulations to Robert and all the best for the future. The talent migration from Autodesk to Bricsys continues.

Video – who is that masked man?

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Last night I made another guest appearance on the BricsCAD Unplugged webcast series. This time I was discussing the LISP development environment, BLADE. Here’s the video:

Bonus points will be awarded for identifying three items of interest in the background. No, not counting my dog Sunday asleep at lower left.

Despite going way over time, there was still nowhere near enough opportunity to describe the full LISPy awesomeness that BLADE represents. I am therefore scheduled to return for another two or three episodes beginning in February. In those, I’ll be doing more of a step-by-step demonstration rather than the overview and V19 new feature description I did in this episode. If you have any particular requests for what you want covered, please comment on this post.

I also showed how the tools in BLADE (e.g. the (inspector) function) are still worth having for any DWG-based CAD Manager or power user, even if you’re not a full-on LISP programmer. If you have to work out what’s going on with dodgy DWG files, you’ll want to have (inspector) in your set of tools.

The BricsCAD Unplugged webcast broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube. This was the last episode for 2018 because of Christmas and New Year.

Wielding BLADE on BricsCAD Unplugged

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In September I was the special guest on the BricsCAD Unplugged episode BricsCAD Unplugged – Steve Johnson 5 surprises moving to BricsCAD. Next Wednesday I will return, this time to wield BLADE, the best thing to happen to CAD LISP in nearly 20 years. I’ll be introducing it and demonstrating a few things, including the new features that came with V19.

These live broadcasts are run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube. This broadcast will start at UTC 15:00 (3 PM) on Wednesday, 19 December 2018. Here’s that time in a few handy time zones:

Location	Zone	Time
San Francisco	PST	07:00
Minneapolis	CST	09:00
New York	EST	10:00
London	GMT	15:00
Brussels	CET	16:00
Moscow	MSK	18:00
Mumbai	IST	20:30
Perth	AWST	23:00

My Bricsys 2018 – getting there

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Last month I attended my third annual Bricsys conference. Following on from Munich and Paris, this year’s event was held in London. (For those who remember M’s cheesy hit Pop Musik from 1979, you will notice that Bricsys is holding these events in reverse order, and the next event should therefore be held in New York).

Before we get to the conference itself, I should point out that I preceded it by pinging around Europe doing other Bricsys-related things. I had a couple of days in Berlin with BLADE creator Torsten Moses, preparing our upcoming presentation on BricsCAD’s VLIDE-beating IDE.

We retired to a church building in a forest just outside Berlin and spent a very long day thrashing out a series of demonstrations, down to the last click and keystroke.

Then I shot over to Vienna for another couple of days, where I interviewed the good people at Schrack Seconet about their experiences with their 101 licenses of BricsCAD.

Look out for that when it’s published on the Bricsys Blog in the forthcoming Real World BricsCAD series.

I spent a couple of days in the English countryside rehearsing and preparing for the BLADE presentation, and took this photo which I inserted into my PowerPoint at the last minute.

THE BLADE at Reading Abbey – modernity towers over the ruins of what was once magnificent

Once in London and checked into the hotel, I visited the Bricsys 2018 venue, The Brewery.

It was interesting to check out the preparation that goes into running an event like this. Here, the AV people were testing the individual elements of the huge screen.

Then it was back to the hotel bar where I caught up with lots of old friends, many of whom I knew from previous Autodesk and Bricsys events. In addition to big CAD names like Ralph Grabowski, Randall Newton, R.K. McSwain, Robert Green, Owen Wengerd, Don Strimbu and several Bricsys high-ups, it was great to finally meet the amazing LISP talent Lee Mac.

Steve and a few of the former Autodesk people

It was particularly pleasant to meet up again with the fabulous and talented IPoCs Lynn Allen and Heidi Hewett, who I last met in person at the AutoCAD 2010 launch in San Francisco. The networking that goes on at these events can be just as educational as the presentations, and I certainly learned a few things over a Leffe or two.

Lynn loves Leffes

A dinner for (mostly) press people also proved educational. Despite knowing that some big announcement had been made to the Bricsys employees, we were still none the wiser about exactly what that announcement was. We know now, of course, but right then we were still in the dark.

One thing that was different for me this year is that quite a few people approached me to thank me for my writings on this blog. It was amazing for me to be standing next to somebody way more famous than me, and have people want to shake my hand. Although I found it odd, it’s also gratifying. Thank you to those people who took time out to say that they appreciate what I do.

In the next post in this series, I’ll describe day 1, where the shock announcement was made, and where a user group was born.

Other views on the Hexagon/Bricsys acquisition

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I’ve made a couple of posts on this subject, but so have several others who might have different perspectives. This post is merely an accumulation of links to those other sources.

R.K. McSwain, CAD Panacea – Bricsys 2018 Conference – London
Jimmy Bergmark, JTB World Blog – Bricsys and BricsCAD now in the big Hexagon family of companies
Cyrena Respini-Irwin, Cadalyst – Backed by a New Big Brother, Bricsys Eyes a Bigger Piece of the Pie
Paul Wilkinson, Extranet Evolution – Hexagon acquires Bricsys
Paul Wilkinson, Extranet Evolution – Hexagon on Bricsys 24/7: “Watch this space”
Anthony Frausto-Robledo, architosh – Breaking: HEXAGON Just Became World’s Largest AEC BIM & CAD Company
Anthony Frausto-Robledo, architosh – Hexagon Now Has End-to-End AEC Solutions Platform with Acquisition of Bricsys
GISuser – Hexagon strengthens its construction solutions portfolio for AEC market with Bricsys acquisition
Ralph Grabowski, WorldCAD Access – Bricsys 2018 London: Day 1
Schnitger Corp – Hexagon acquires Bricsys for AEC workflows
Jeff Rowe, MCADCafe – Bricsys Acquisition Could Challenge Autodesk
Nordic 9 – Hexagon acquires Belgian CAD software company Bricsys
CAD.cz (auto-translated from Czech) – Hexagon buys Bricsys
David Levin, isicad (auto-translated from Russian) – Bricsys bought by billionaire Hexagon
NedCAD – Acquisition of Bricsys by Hexagon ppm
Rakesh Rao – The Bricsys Acquisition by Hexagon : What It Means for Sales Partners
Bricsys press release – Hexagon Acquires Bricsys
Don Strimbu, Bricsys blog – Hexagon acquires Bricsys
Hexagon press release – Hexagon strengthens its construction solutions portfolio for AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) market with Bricsys acquisition
GetSmart! Blog, Hexagon – Why We Just Acquired Bricsys … And What It Means to You
Roopinder Tara, The CAD Insider – Hexagon Buys Bricsys. Does It Matter?

There was also extensive live commentary on Twitter using the #Bricsys2018 hashtag.

Image source: Bricsys

I expect to add to this post over time rather than making a new one. If you have any suggestions for other links to include, please comment below.

Hexagon acquiring Bricsys – what does it mean for the future?

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As reported earlier, Swedish Hexagon AB has acquired Bricsys. It goes without saying that this was the big talking point among everyone at Bricsys 2018.

Surprise!

This announcement was a big surprise to almost everyone at the conference. Hexagon has been working very closely with Bricsys for nearly two years, so if someone was going to buy Bricsys then Hexagon would have been my first guess, but the fact that it was happening at all came straight out of the blue.

Most Bricsys employees in London only found out about the acquisition at a meeting in the hotel on the eve of the conference. Ably shepherded away from the area by legendary CAD figure Don Strimbu, I was unable to hear the announcement. I did hear the applause that followed it, though.

Gatekeeper Don and his ironic jacket

Fear, uncertainty and doubt

FUD often accompanies big change, so it’s no surprise that over the two days that followed the official announcement, I was asked by quite a few people what I thought of the news. My response went something like this:

I don’t know yet. It could be very good for Bricsys.

Erik De Keyser’s announcement that he’s staying around was welcomed, but there were still some concerns expressed. For example, an employee had been through something similar elsewhere and the company that took over proceeded to slice through half of the workforce. A partner feared that Hexagon only wanted to use BricsCAD as an engine to run CADWorx and that progress in other areas would be limited.

Answering questions

I was able to attend the press event and was able to ask some questions of Hexagon PPM Executive Vice President Rick Allen and Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser.

Rick Allen and Erik De Keyser answer press questions

One question I asked of Rick went something like this:

Bricsys operates very differently to most companies. Is that going to change?

The response was interesting and instructive:

I don’t like fixing things that aren’t broken.

That’s reassuring, as were responses from Rick to other questions. He clearly understands CAD and what customers want. He and Autodesk have history, and he knows how they operate. He knows about the widespread customer dissatisfaction with Autodesk, he understands the reasons for it, and he plans to take ruthless advantage of it. He understands BricsCAD and the advantages it offers to AutoCAD customers who convert.

I had a chance to talk further with Rick at the after-event party. That was also very instructive. Rick “gets it”. Rick clearly understands very well that he’s bought an absolute diamond of a company. The port of the huge CADWorx suite to BricsCAD has given Hexagon a thorough insight into the quality of the people there and the software they write. I came away convinced that he really isn’t going to break it.

Crystal ball time

So, what will happen? Here are my best guesses, any of which could easily be proven wrong:

Bricsys will go on creating software as it did before.
There won’t be sackings. I expect an expansion of staff numbers rather than a reduction.
I don’t expect Hexagon to interfere too much in the software creation and improvement side of things, and any contributions are likely to be financial and beneficial.
Hexagon is a much bigger company than Autodesk. It will use its marketing power and widespread office network to increase sales world-wide, but particularly in the US. How this pans out for existing resellers is yet to be negotiated.
Hexagon is going to go after Autodesk customers. Hard. Not just AutoCAD customers, either, although in the BIM area it says it expects to win business more from the existing large untapped market than from existing Revit customers.
Autodesk is likely to get litigious. (Martyn Day: “This means war”). Hexagon is ready for this. (Rick Allen: “We went into this with our eyes open”). From the little I know, I suspect Autodesk will lose badly and go home with its tail between its legs.
Hexagon isn’t going to use BricsCAD purely as an engine to run CADWorx, because that would be stupid. In Hexagon’s best interests for BricsCAD use to become more widespread. It’s much easier to sell a suite of applications to a corporate client when it’s based on a commonly-used base rather than something few people have heard of. By dramatically expanding BricsCAD sales, Hexagon will win not only pure income but also the confidence of the market.
Prices? Who knows. It’s commonly held among industry observers that BricsCAD is too cheap for its own good. Maybe prices will creep up, but there’s a long way to go before they approach Autodesk levels.
Hexagon isn’t going to rename BricsCAD. Yes, I know Intergraph isn’t called Intergraph any more, but this is different. If you’re going to knock over a long-standing near-monopoly in the DWG world, you’re going to need a name with a long-standing history in that space and an excellent reputation among an important core of influencers. Starting again with a new name would make life more difficult than it needs to be. (This is the prediction I’m least confident about).

If I were asked now what I thought of the acquisition, I would modify my response somewhat:

I think it will be very good for Bricsys. Very bad for Autodesk, too.

The CAD world is in for a shake-up.

Hexagon acquires Bricsys

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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.

Video – Steve on BricsCAD Unplugged

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Following on from Lynn Allen and Robert Green’s guest appearances on the BricsCAD Unplugged webcast a couple of weeks ago, this time it was my turn.

Last night (my time) I was the special guest on the episode BricsCAD Unplugged – Steve Johnson 5 surprises moving to BricsCAD. I’m introduced at 2:12 and appear at 3:30. Here’s the full video:

In this week’s episode, you’ll witness:

Me discussing the five biggest things that pleasantly surprised me about BricsCAD. (I have more than five, but time was limited).
Don Strimbu bribing me with drinks containers.
An actual printed copy of Cadalyst magazine from 1995, complete with my old column Bug Watch (1995-2008).
The excellent euphemism, “You’re generally pretty conservative in terms of your praise.”
Don throwing me a curveball by introducing my points out of order!
The announcement that I’ll be at Bricsys 2018 in London and possibly participating in the BLADE session.
Me saying, “No. I’m wrong.”
Me drinking a glass of wine (parental guidance advised – alcohol consumption depicted). If you care, it’s a Shiraz (that’s Syrah if you’re American) from South Australia’s Limestone Coast region.
Total lack of coordination from everyone in raising our drinks at the end.

Thank you to the Bricsys crew for the invitation, it was a blast! If you ever want me on again, I’ll be happy to oblige.

For future reference, these live broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube.

Where on Earth is Lynn Allen going?

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Well, this is a fun video for CAD geeks. The third in the BricsCAD Unplugged series of weekly webcasts, this one promotes the Bricsys 2018 conference which will be held on 23 and 24 October in London.

These live broadcasts run on the Bricsys Facebook page and are then quickly transferred to YouTube.

This one is interesting because of the people in it and some interesting news. It features Bricsys regulars Don Strimbu, Heidi Hewett, Vince Aman and Matt Olding, but also a couple of special guests. First on the scene is Robert Green (see 4:57) but the real surprise comes at 9:23 when somebody who may be familiar to you appeared in the bottom right corner:

The fun part comes when Lynn is “persuaded” with the promise of beer to turn up in London. Lynn won’t be going to AU this year (“My invitation must have got lost in the mail!”), along with quite a few others. So if you’re going to Vegas you’ll have to put up with somebody slightly less popular on stage instead.

So Bricsys 2018 in London is where all the cool people will be. Lynn and Heidi will be there and Robert will be rocking out with the Bricsys band. I might not be lead-guitarist-cool but I’ll be there too. What is said in the video about Bricsys conferences being great for meeting people is very true. Everybody’s approachable, right up to Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser, so come up and say hello.

If you want to join us, sign up here. At the time of writing, there are just a few hours until the end of Early Bird pricing on the tickets.

Did I mention it’s being held in a brewery?

Oh, and there’s some CAD stuff.*

Here’s the full video:

* The CAD stuff alone made the Bricsys Conferences well worth attending for me in past years.

More details of Bricsys 2018 in London

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As I mentioned in March, this year’s Bricsys conference will be held in London (yes, the British one) on 23 and 24 October.

More details have now been revealed on the Bricsys Conference page and tickets are now on sale. We now know:

- Venue: The Brewery, 52 Chiswell Street, London EC1Y 4SD, UK.
- Cost: €150, which is about US$180 (plus taxes in the EU, which you may be able to deduct). This is the early bird rate until 30 June.
- Speakers: Ten have been named so far, including big-name signing Heidi Hewett.

My attendance at the 2016 and 2017 conferences was well worthwhile, even coming from Australia. With the user/customer event now extending to two days rather than one, I expect this year’s event will be a step up from that. I’m hoping to attend this one too, in which case I will be happy to meet up with any of you.

bricsys,gent,london

Disclosure: Bricsys covered my travel expenses for the 2016 and 2017 conferences.

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 3

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Welcome to the second in this series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

David Kingsley has had a long and interesting career, was present in the early days of CAD adoption, and served as an AUGI board member for years. Here is the third and final part of David’s interview. This was the most interesting part of the interview for me, but unfortunately much of the more hilarious anecdotes and other discussions were off the record so I can’t share them. I hope you enjoy what’s left!

Steve: What are you most proud of achieving with AUGI?

David: I have to say AUGIWorld magazine and the website. That’s where the group really took off and looked professional.

Steve: If you could go back in time, what would you do differently with the benefit of hindsight?

David: As you get older you learn a few things. I’d probably be a bit more diplomatic about the changes that they went through, and try to resolve things in another way. I don’t know that it would have done much good. I got pretty arrogant about their turnover. I tried to stick to the facts without getting personal; I would always try to do that. I would try to convey factual information but I went a little over the edge with the campaign against what they were trying to do.

I really have no regrets about anything to do with getting the magazine and website started, and how we set up that agreement with SolidVapor. I think that really put a professional face on AUGI at that point.

Steve: What value do you think Autodesk has received from AUGI? Is it a marketing tool…?

David: Yes and no. Having worked directly with the engineering people, I felt they genuinely wanted to know what the users wanted, at least at that point in time. They used us as a filter, so to speak. We were out there gathering information and we were supposed to put it into a filtered and cohesive form for them to use. That’s what I remember as the mission of the group, which is to be the mouthpiece of the user community to Autodesk.

[Some discussion on Robert Green’s AUGI involvement]

I message with Robert often on Facebook and he’s been to visit my house.

Steve: I finally got to meet Robert after all these years, about six months ago in Paris when we both got invited to the Bricsys Conference. It means I’ve finally got to meet some people I haven’t managed to meet on my travels in the past.

[Some discussion about user group names]

David: The original name of the group was NAAUG (North American AutoCAD User Group) and we switched over to AUGI when we went international. Looking for the new name, we came up with a number of variations and one of them I remember was DAUGP (pronounced Dog Pee)!

Steve: [Spits coffee] That’s a good one!

David: I didn’t think that was a good one.

[Some discussion of user groups in general, Bricsys and BricsCAD]

David: I always like to stay on top of these things, you know? I read Ralph Grabowski’s newsletter all the time and he’s been talking about it [BricsCAD] a lot lately.

[Some discussion of the then-forthcoming bundling of AutoCAD and most verticals and Autodesk’s move to subscription only]

David: I know they’re trying to emulate Adobe’s subscription model. It’s going to be painful for a while but I think they’ll eventually get there. It’s just got to be affordable. But you know, people scream about the price and when I looked into it the cost was about $1.00 to $1.50 an hour based on 2000 hours a year. If you can’t afford $1.50 or $2.00 an hour overhead, you’re in the wrong business!

Steve: Yeah, but every business likes to reduce its overheads and doesn’t like to pay extra overheads. Autodesk is doing what it can to reduce its costs; it’s just sliced its workforce by about 23% in two stages. Nobody likes paying more money than they have to.

[More discussion about perpetual licenses, subscription, maintenance and ADN]

Steve: Do you have any fun stories to tell about your AUGI days?

David: I remember checking in to the MGM Grand for AU and being there for nine days, never even leaving the hotel. We would go in and start setting up AU and we would man the booth and teach classes and then break it down and do a debriefing. I remember one time all of us in a conference room and we all just fell asleep. We folded our arms on the desk, put our heads down, a couple of people got tired and a couple of people kept talking, a couple of people dozed off and sooner or later it was everybody. We were all just flat exhausted. We all woke up and said, “What are we doing here?”

I lived in Denver for many years, a ten hour drive to Las Vegas. It was worth taking the car for a nine-day stay. I think I did that 5 or 6 years running. I remember a few of us had to find a laundromat midweek, and I was the only one with a car. One year I arrived at the MGM about seven one night after this long drive, and it was just jammed to the hilt. I couldn’t even get off the street. I had a lot of stuff and decided to get a valet, because Autodesk would expense stuff like that for us, but I couldn’t get one. It took me an hour to check in. Turned out the Rolling Stones were playing the MGM Grand that night! I was there about two hours before show time.

On the way to my room there were people walking around the arena trying to sell tickets for $350 a seat! I like the Stones but I wasn’t ready to pay that and I’m sure my wife wouldn’t have been happy either.

Another time, I went to a hospitality party with the executives. The suite there had all this dark wood and it looked like a cabin in the Rocky Mountains somewhere, up on the 15th floor of the MGM Grand. All sorts of hors d’oeuvre and wine, I’m sure they paid a bundle for that!

Steve: Yeah, the parties were always fun.

I have a falling asleep story too. I was at AU 2006. I was with Owen Wengerd and we were hanging out at a bar until 1 AM and we were just about to head off to bed when we saw Tony Peach walk past. He was a great guy, passed on a few years ago, but Owen and I both knew him from earlier times. We ended up at a bar talking and it was about 4 AM before we called it a night. The next morning I had a class, I was hoping to learn .NET programming for AutoCAD. I got there and sat down and my eyes glazed over and it was the old dropping off and neck-jerking wake-up thing. That’s the reason I never became a .NET programmer in AutoCAD! I just slept through the class. It was too hard. I gave up.

[We swap a bunch of really funny off-the-record stories – I wish I could share them!]

David: [About Lynn Allen] How can you axe a person like that? She’s kind of the face of the corporation.

Steve: Yup. I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s personal.

David: Yeah. Also there was this thing about age discrimination. A lot of the older folks are wondering whether this had something to do with age. Who knows? Inevitably as you’ve been there a long time your salary climbs and you get expensive after a while, but they probably generate a lot more revenue than they cost.

Steve: I’m sure Lynn generated a lot more revenue than she cost.

David: Yeah. I can imagine next year when some guy in a suit shows up, they’re not going to be happy!

Steve: Well, she’s a drawcard, that’s for sure. And I guess she’s likely to be somebody else’s drawcard soon.

David: That’s true. I understand she’s got offers or at least approaches from all the competitors. Solidworks in particular.

Steve: I wonder if she comes as a package with Heidi Hewett? I understand Heidi wrote a lot of the material.

[Note: this interview took place before Heidi’s move to Bricsys]

David: Yeah, That would be a real coup. Hiedi was her cohort there. I remember watching Heidi teach a class and the software was acting up. I blurted out that a number of mathematicians throughout history have had numbers associated with them like Avagadro, Reynolds and so on. I want to create a Kingsley Factor, as follows: “The efficiency of a piece of software is inversely proportional to the number of eyes looking at the screen.” It always screws up when 50 people are looking at it.

Steve: The curve will show a dip at two people observing, based on my experience in support. I would get a call out about a certain problem and the two words that were guaranteed to fix it were “Show me.”

David: Heidi and her husband Nate lived close to us. We would catch up with them at the local pub from time to time.

Steve: I remember Nate got the shaft [from Autodesk] in about 2009 in an earlier “culling of the unwanted”.

David: Earlier than that, there was another big reduction-in-force and we were there [at Autodesk] and we knew it was going to happen.

Immediately after our board meeting, we left San Rafael and relocated in San Francisco for AU. As I recall that was the year of four AUs. One young Autodesk employee was with us and said, “Well, I got laid off. But! I have a job to finish off through Autodesk University and they didn’t take away my American Express card. So we’re gonna party this week!”

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 1
IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 2

The game has changed – Robert Green migrates to BricsCAD

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Is anybody left who still thinks BricsCAD isn’t a serious replacement for AutoCAD? If that’s you, perhaps the latest news might make you take it seriously. No, not the Heidi Hewett news. Even more recent news than that!

Robert Green, CAD Management guru, Cadalyst writer and consultant (not to mention a rather good guitarist) has been announced as the first Bricsys Certified Migration Consultant.

Image courtesy of Bricsys

Read all about what Robert has to say on this Bricsys blog post.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for the last few years will be surprised by none of what Robert has to say in that blog post. It’s not merely a repeat of what I’ve been saying for some time now, it’s all factually correct and easily verifiable by any competent CAD Manager.

I’ve been there and done that. I’ve gone through the process of taking a very complex custom AutoCAD environment, applying it to BricsCAD and giving it to my users. They loved it. No training was required to work as usual. Most things happened quicker, more conveniently, or both, starting right from the speedy installation. Once the product is in place and established, training can then be applied to take advantage of the places where BricsCAD is ahead of AutoCAD.

If you’re a CAD Manager where AutoCAD is used and you haven’t checked out BricsCAD yet, it’s about time you did.

This might come as a shock to those who see Autodesk domination of DWG CAD as a permanent fact of life, but the game has changed. AutoCAD’s stagnation and comments by senior figures show that the former flagship is clearly unloved by the powers within Autodesk. AutoCAD LT, even more so. An unimpressive AutoCAD 2019 shows that major improvements can no longer be expected in exchange for your ever-increasing annual payments, and with large numbers of people having been offloaded from the research and development teams, who would do it anyway? Meanwhile, BricsCAD development shoots ahead.

Thanks to decades of hostility towards customers that has only accelerated in recent years, Autodesk can’t even rely on customer loyalty for survival. When there’s a serious competitor that offers an easy migration path, the inertia that has kept Autodesk alive so far in the DWG space is no longer enough. The feeling among industry observers I meet is that Autodesk is in a decline of its own making. The only debate is whether that decline is temporary or terminal.

Back to Robert et al. Autodesk has lost many good people, and Bricsys is gaining them. The momentum is clearly with the Belgian company. Anybody want to run bets on who the next big name defector will be?

BricsCAD Shape for Mac

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BricsCAD Shape, the free DWG-based 3D direct modeling application from Bricsys, has now been released for macOS (formerly OS X). See my previous post on Shape for details of what it’s all about.

This is the same, just on a different OS. That’s because unlike Autodesk’s versions of its DWG products, the Bricsys versions are not cynically watered down for Apple users. Those users can now do full 3D conceptual modeling as part of a workflow that leads to full BIM (or simply view and edit DWG files if you’re not that ambitious), and without paying for the privilege.

It’s a proper free perpetual licence without usage restrictions, not a demo. You can’t get a perpetual license of DWG-editing software from Autodesk for any money, so by any measure Shape is a bargain.

The Bricsys blog post can be found here. The download page is here.

A Linux version of Shape is expected later.

Heidi Hewett – Autodesk loses, Bricsys gains

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The most excellent Heidi Hewett was, bafflingly, one of the big-name casualties in Autodesk’s latest experience cull. What was already a big loss to Autodesk has been compounded by her arrival at Autodesk’s most significant AutoCAD competitor, Bricsys.

Heidi has accepted a position as User Success Manager with the Belgian company. I don’t blame her. Bricsys is where the action is. Here’s her opening salvo:

For well over a decade, the world was told that the .dwg file format is not suitable for advanced design workflows. It can’t be used for mechanical design, and it certainly can’t be used for BIM. Bricsys has shown that this old belief is simply not true. The .dwg file format is alive and well and kicking serious butt. I am looking forward to helping Bricsys take .dwg to new, previously unimagined levels, and I’m excited to be part of the team that is doing this for our users.

Is it just me, or does Heidi look more relaxed in her Bricsys photo than she ever did in her Autodesk ones?

Photo credit: Bricsys

Here’s Heidi’s first Bricsys blog post. Can you feel her genuine excitement? Maybe she’s just happy that she’s going to have masses of real improvements to write about, rather than having to stretch out an ever-shrinking set of new AutoCAD features each year.

Given Heidi’s outstanding contribution to assisting CAD users over many years, I’m very happy that she is now going to be able to continue that work. I suspect she’s going to be very busy!

Autodesk loses, Bricsys gains. Big time. What on earth was Autodesk thinking?

Bricsys 2018 comes to London

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I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Bricsys Conference in 2016 (Munich) and 2017 (Paris). This year’s conference will be in another great European city, London, on 23 and 24 October.

Other details have not yet been revealed, but will be posted on the Bricsys Conference page as time goes on. You can sign up on that page for email notifications.

This is a great opportunity for British companies looking at reducing costs and improving efficiency in their CAD and BIM operations to get an idea of what BricsCAD and related applications can do. If you’re further afield, it’s still worth the effort. I was certainly blown away by what I learned at my first conference, and I’d already been evaluating the product for a couple of years before that. It was well worth the journey from Australia.

Disclosure: Bricsys covered my travel expenses for the 2016 and 2017 conferences.

Rock on, Robert Green!

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I’d like to offer my congratulations to Robert Green on his landmark of 400 issues of the CAD Manager’s Newsletter. There’s a interview with Robert here.

As a fellow CAD Manager and Cadalyst contributor, I’ve admired Robert’s work for many years. I finally got to meet Robert last year at the Bricsys Conference 2017 in Paris, and it was a pleasure.

Legends on stage – Robert being interviewed by Don Strimbu at Bricsys 2017

Robert, R.K. McSwain and Steve enjoy lunch at the Carrousel du Louvre

No pictures! R.K. McSwain, Nancy Johnson and Robert

Robert rocks out

Some of you will already be aware that Robert is a seriously good guitarist, and he did not disappoint at the after-conference party. I look forward to seeing Robert again, and to reading many more of his insightful articles.

Gallery – Gent visit 2017 – Sights

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Here are some pictures of some sights I saw in Gent (Ghent) and Brussels during my visit attending the Bricsys Insights press event in April 2017. I published some of these photos at the time but had to remove the post due to technical difficulties I was having with WordPress galleries.

I agree with Serge Jonnaert in Why every Architect should Visit Gent, except I wouldn’t limit it to architects. It’s a very lovely place, well worth a visit by anyone.

Belgian flag, Gravensteen

Gravensteen

View from Gravensteen

Gent

R.K. and Cyrena

Gent at night

Gent’s not all medieval

Gent

Bricsys HQ

Gent

Bikes near railway station, Gent

Multilingual Belgium

Strewth!

Touristy Brussels

Tourist trap waffle, Brussels

Brussels

Gallery – Gent visit 2017 – People

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Here are some pictures of some people I met in Gent (Ghent) during my visit attending the Bricsys Insights press event in April 2017. I published this at the time but had to remove it due to technical difficulties I was having with WordPress galleries. This post is partially a live test for an alternative method of displaying galleries on this blog.

Click on an image to enter the Carousel full-screen gallery viewer. If you have any difficulties, please let me know the problem and the device you’re using. Thanks!