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transcribed by Ralph Grabowski
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| Executives from Graebert GmbH took questions for nearly two hours from the CAD media during the company's Annual Meeting. The focus of the questions was on the company's surprise announcement that it was getting into the BIM business. But, CEO Wilfried Graebert emphasized, "The objective is not to produce a BIM modeler, but to produce 2D documentation" from BIM models.
Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, location of this year's Berlin conference
Here is my transcription of the event, which may not be not word-for-word.
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Q: Why would someone use ARES [for creating 2D drawings that document a BIM project], as opposed to the documentation built into Revit?
A: An electrical designer gets Revit files, and says, "What do I do with that?" He can use ARES for this. The BIM users we interviewed complained about the quality of Revit drawings.
A: Some AutoCAD developers are stuck; they might die; Autodesk might buy one developer and that's it for the others. I am looking for AutoCAD developers looking to interact with Revit, but not inside Revit. Part of the function is converting Revit objects into DWG objects.
Q: So when they stay in AutoCAD, the associativity is lost? You need the associative mode; this is what architects would love.
A: We are just adding annotation on top, as we do not change the Revit model. When the BIM model is updated, the drawings will be updated -- this is in the roadmap for ARES. In the first version, you would have to re-import the BIM model after it is updated.
Q: Associativity works on the mechanical side for Autodesk: AutoCAD is associative with Inventor, but that took years to implement.
A: On the mechanical side, instead of creating an alternative to Solidworks or Inventor, we work in partnership with industry leaders to partner with them. [The reference is to PTC/Onshape and Dassault Systemes.]
CEO of Graebert GmbH, Wilfried Graebert, giving the keynote address
Q: You showed at the conference yesterday developers using your BIM as an engine. You are three-quarters of the way to a stand-alone BIM product.
A: It is 20 years too late to create a Revit clone. It is not that we didn't think about it. We thought of an easier-to-use version of Revit that runs in the cloud -- this was our initial idea. But when we spoke to Revit users, they told us that they already have Revit, that they already have Revit-trained users, but that they don't like the drawing output from Revit. So we concentrated on that.
A: From the history of our company, you can see we are big in Japan, India, and here [in Germany]. We definitely are not worldwide. But our partners -- Dassault, PTC/Onshape, and Corel -- have worldwide distribution. When we partner with OEMs, like ones with more than 10 thousand licenses -- they have worldwide distribution. We do piggyback marketing!
The big construction firms we work with in Japan have 20,000 AutoCAD licenses. They want to cut expense on 2D CAD. The subscription model is something they do not like. They are early adopters of mobile and cloud. They have departments whose sole job is to look for new technology; there is no pressure, such as "maybe next fiscal year."
Q: How much do they save buying ARES instead of AutoCAD?
A: The cost savings of ARES over AutoCAD is 5:1 [ARES being five times cheaper to license than AutoCAD]. Japan is the worst part of the world for Autodesk. When you reach the top five in Japan, you reach all the rest in Japan due to the pyramid structure.
Q: But Bricsys has done well in Japan, as well.
A: That is on the mechanical side.
The more you get local, the easier it gets. The developer we showcased at the conference yesterday from India has the monopoly on software for approving building permits [in a dozen cities]. If you don't have him, you can forget it. He uses Graebert software.
Q: If the cloud reigns supreme over desktop by 2032, as you suggested yesterday, will this affect the DWG file format?
A: Onshape got rid of the file format, and that works well for them [as did Dassault Systemes in V6]. But it is very convenient for us to work with DWG objects, because we are familiar with them, and because it is better for third-party developers to access data.
A: One of my fears was that when Autodesk was successful on the cloud, they would do away with DWG. When you compare the number of ODA users with AutoCAD users, however, the ODA number wins by far. If Autodesk gets rid of DWG, then the ODA could turn it into an ISO standard.
Q: Every one [of the CAD vendors] was looking at CAD on the cloud, but didn't think it would turn out. Now that Onshape was bought by PTC, the attitude has changed. Now everyone is worried.
A: The early adopters of the cloud are not the smallest [design] companies, but the largest ones. The cloud maximizes the value for you, the bigger you are. This is why we are landing large customers for Kudo [browser-based CAD].
Q: And yet [PTC ceo] Jim Hepplemann in his victory speech said Onshape would finally allow PTC to reach the small customer. The pricing of Onshape and Fusion at $100 a month is attractive to small business.
A: Mechanical drawings are not as large or complex as in the architectural arena. We have guys who put everything into a single drawing with no xrefs -- an entire city down to the toilet. We found we are a perfect fit for facilities management. When a Lufthansa has buildings worldwide, it is a perfect fit for the cloud; these guys were waiting for us.
Q: Is Graebert an OEM business or a retail business?
A: We need both. We use our [ARES] retail brand to attract OEM [software firms that relabel ARES software] customers. If we were to work only with OEMs, we would not get customer feedback. Being able to view and annotate very large drawings in view-only mode with a large variety of [markup] stamps comes from customers in Japan.
Our plan was never to have a reseller in every country. We concentrate on markets where we can be #1 and #2. We are very strong in the USA, #1, with a very strong OEM [Dassault]. Japan is #2, and Germany is #3 for us; India is the fastest growing. We pay commissions; if they don't sell anything, it doesn't cost us anything.
[On the other hand] Our OEM contracts have a minimum payment, and the contract lasts for ten years. This means we know we can spend on R&D for at least seven years to further develop the our software.
Japan is very strict on security and does everything in-house. The first time we showed them view-only links, they asked, "Why would we want to do that?" A year later, they realized the value of it. Adding an expiry date on view-only links comes from customers in Japan.
Our kitchen design mobile app is one of the very few mobile design apps in the world that makes a profit, because without it, 30% of kitchen installations in Germany historically fail.
Q: What about AI?
A: There is some machine learning from AWS [Amazon Web services] that is applied to Kudo for image detection, such as pictures that contain trees or buildings -- transcriptions are added about the content of pictures. This is the first step. Translating voice notes into [text] comments is another example.
Q: What is the next step in AI for you?
A: Well, pictures is the first step. We are researching repetitive tasks that we can simplify.
A: For instance, taking pictures of fences surrounding construction sites; you can manually tag it a few times before it gets boring. This is something AI can do. Customers will generate the volume of photos that will learn what fences look like.
Q: Design firms get sued over drawings, not designs. There is information missing from drawings. I saw some AI that reads contracts and then checks if drawings are missing. Autodesk has research showing 40% of all errors come from drawings; this is where errors are made in accuracy, such as dimensioning. This seems to be an area for AI: to check that nothing is missing, that drawings conform to standards.
A: What is a 'good' drawing? This is a personal question. We now have much more information about the objects we are dimensioning. The old way [to dimension automatically] was to look for every break in a line, overall length, and segments. That was just looking at geometry; now we can look at a door and know the kinds of dimensions it needs, and where it is in the wall -- and even the wall's materials might determine the dimensions.
Q: How about me asking my tablet to dimension all doors it can see on the site?
A: It would have to be a BIM drawing. If it is DWG, then it is just entities. At this point, ARES still works only with DWG files.
Q: Could we have links in view-only and printed drawings to access the latest version of the drawing?
A: We have started to think about it. How do we work with comments and markups, go into a meeting, and then come back with changes. We can do a QR [quick response] code to a link that shows the drawing as it currently is.
Q: When will we be able to edit dynamic blocks in ARES?
A: We have lots of ideas of how to go beyond dynamic blocks, as dynamic block development [by Autodesk] stopped many years ago. We will show more next year. Now we can convert dynamic blocks to our custom blocks; custom blocks that go back to AutoCAD become simple blocks. ARES can work with AutoCAD's dynamic blocks.
www.graebert.com
[Disclosure: Graebert provided me with airfare, accommodation, some meals, and a corporate gift.]
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| Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog:
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I just started a new job in interior design. I am an old hand at AutoCAD drafting, but here I hit upon something that shocked me: Layer 0 turned off in print layouts. I would never do that. I create my blocks on Layer 0, so that my blocks can pick up on the layer color of the layer that they are placed in. Can you think of a reason why anyone would turn off Layer 0?
- MM
The editor replies: My guess is that it was done by someone who doesn't understand the significance of layer 0 in DWG programs.
Re: Q&A With Bricsys Execs
How does Bricsys hope to succeed against Revit when many contracts, engineers, and clients require Revit-format deliverables? They are specified even in government contracts.
When it comes to SketchUp vs. Shape, the big difference is an active content and extension developer market for SketchUp.
- Dave Edwards
Dave Edwards Consulting
The editor replies: BIM programs are strong in specific regions, and Revit is strong in places like USA and England, and weak in other areas of the world.
The Open Design Alliance is reverse engineering the Revit file formats. Some BIM packages already have the ability to read RVT and RFA files, and perhaps next year will be able write them. These phases I and II are being implemented by the ODA. I believe.
Phase III is to replicate the Revit API, which is well underway; I am unsure if any CAD vendor is implementing it, as "no one" wants to recreate Revit, although perhaps some upstart will try. The idea, instead, is to be able to access data stored in Revit files, without requiring a Revit licence.
One tactic will be to nibble around the edges and replace inefficient Revit functions.
The road to well-functioning AutoCAD workalikes took more than two decades. But they showed a path to how to accomplish a workalike CAD system. As a result, the BIM workalike market may develop faster.
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"However convenient for models of the economy, the weather, and perhaps even the human body, determinism is inimical to a universe governed by information, which is defined as surprise."
- George Gilder in 'Knowledge and Power' |
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