Issue #1,081 | The Business of CAD | 1 February 2021
interview by Ralph Grabowski
ARES Commander began as a replacement to AutoCAD, and then found its greatest impact as OEM software (licensed and branded by other firms) by firms such as Dassault Systemes (“DraftSight”) and Corel Software (“CorelCAD”). Graebert GmbH found further success in selling into verticals, such as facilities mapping and kitchen design.
In 2019, the company announced its plan to move into the adjacent-BIM market. With the limitations of Revit well known, Graebert saw the opportunity to provide ARES with Revit/IFC viewing, data extraction, and linked drawing generation.
Following last December’s announcement of the upcoming ARES Commander 2022, I interviewed CEO Wilfried Graebert, CTO Robert Graebert, and marketing director Cedric Desbordes.
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Ralph Grabowski: In 2019, you came out with a BIM roadmap for your ARES Commander CAD software. How closely are you following it?
CTO Robert Graebert: We set out a set of goals that year. We wanted to be able to bring BIM models inside our CAD program, be able to extract data from them to give you access to it, and then create drawings.
We couldn’t deliver all of that last year, because there was so much foundational stuff that we ended up doing. We are now filling in those [missing] things. What we are delivering this year is not the end of the picture, but an important milestone.
Marketing Director Cedric Desbordes: Last year, there already was the idea of extracting drawings. What we are showing this year is automating drawings -- the idea of automating [the production of] more and more drawings.
R Graebert: When we talk to users, a lot of them are frustrated with the drawing creation process in some [CAD] tools that are popular today. They are frustrated with the disconnect to the original BIM model. When you look at, for example, how you are supposed to collaborate between Revit and AutoCAD, it’s extremely broken.
We want to make that better, especially when you change the [BIM] model after you create the drawings. Every architect I talk to is frustrated with having to redo that work. Doing it twice kills them because of the time. They get paid for it, and they’ll do it; it’s just that it’s not creative, it’s not interesting work; it’s just dumb-work.
That is our first driver. And based on that, we say, “What more can we automate?” You would just do the one plan, and then we would help you create the other plans.
So there is a whole roadmap of capabilities we can still work on.
Grabowski: I am not familiar with CADian, the Korean distributor you landed as a customer. Am I correct that they are the largest CAD dealer in Korea?
Desbordes: Cadian has been very successful at establishing Korean brands, as Korean people are very proud of national brands.
Cadian was very successful over the last few decades, but more and more it was feeling the need for more than a general CAD package. Also, it faced increased pressure from Chinese [software] products in terms of performance.
It intends to continue with the IntelliCAD brand, but sees that the switch to ARES is necessary now. It felt it needed what we are doing with mobile and cloud. Korea is very strongly developing the Internet and is known for having the fastest Internet in the world. They are also very strong in mobile. It is a sweet spot for us.
The Korean market is booming for CAD alternatives. Cadian shared figures from 2019 that showed that something in the range of 60% of users were considering switching from AutoCAD in the next one or two years.
Wilfried Grabert: We have a similar history. Cadian started [like Graebert GmbH] very early as an AutoCAD distributor, and tried their luck after with an AutoCAD alternative. So we will have a good relationship moving forward.
Grabowski: In creating their OEM version, did Cadian rename ARES, and did they change more than just the language?
Desbordes: Actually, it is interesting that they want to use the brand ‘ARES’. So they are distributing ARES.
R Graebert: We are seeing this more and more. Five years ago, every OEM wanted their own brand [on the software]. We are getting more and more people who are okay with the ARES brand, they prefer to be associated with ARES. We don’t say it has to be ARES, but if brands want to do this, it definitely doesn’t hurt us.
Grabowski: It helps them, because otherwise they are just selling a new brand name that nobody knows.
W Graebert: The latest big one was the IIA, the Indian Institute of Architects. They insisted on their own name, it had to be an Indian product.
Desbordes: It is not exactly what we would call an OEM version. As a professional organization, the IIA has little expertise or willingness to enter the business of software distribution or development. Graebert India licenses the brand “IIACAD” from the IIA, and IIACAD is sold by Graebert India to the [20,000] IIA members, under specific terms negotiated by the IIA.
Grabowski: Did they make changes to the software?
Desbordes: Technically speaking, the product is ARES Commander desktop version for Windows and Mac, with the mobile and cloud versions sold as add-ons, if the members want that.
R Graebert: I think we saw it somewhat in the Revit letter that was posted last summer-- I think there are industry associations who kind of see their role now in advocacy around software vendors.
We are pretty happy that the IIA came to us, as I think it is an industry model. Why not do something for your members, use your collaborative buying power to work with a vendor like us to have a standardized [contract] term? There are specific terms that make sense for the IIA; for example, if an IIA member retires, he can pass the license on to his direct descendent.
Desbordes: There was a strong frustration by Indian architects of the behavior of Autodesk. You see this through the declarations by architects in other places in the world, even in Brazil. There seems to be a serious movement from architects and, I would presume, from other professional organizations.
R Graebert: You would think the market is saturated, but we are still finding new customers. When times are bad, the first thing a government will do is invest in infrastructure, or they will do an R&D [research and development] spend [that requires software purchases]. And so CAD benefits in a boom and in a bust.
There still is a question what happens this year, if 30 or 40 percent of architects lose their jobs.
Grabowski: You would say you are strong in Korea, India, Japan; where else?
R Graebert: In the last 12 months we really built out our team for the German-speaking market. It always takes two to three years to really get to the big accounts, but we are quite happy with the results we are already seeing. It is our home market, and we need to have a presence here.
Desbordes: Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong have also always been very strong for us.
W Graebert: And we have a growing number of OEMs [who resell ARES software under their own brand names], who are acting worldwide. This is still the majority of our revenue.
Desbordes: We see quite a shift in new users coming to us. They are interested in solutions that involve cloud and mobile. For instance, through Onshape [which embeds Graebert's Kudo cloud-based DWG editor], they see that ARES is a good fit. We see quite a number of Bricsys resellers coming to us, recently.
W Graebert: What Cedric said about Bricsys resellers: They show up, we don’t look for them. They are showing up, I think, because Bricsys is changing its business model, and it looks like some resellers are not happy with that strategy.
Grabowski: It is always uncertain what the future holds with a new owner.
Desbordes: They are selling more and more direct to large customers. They say to old resellers, “You’ve been developing a market for 20 years, and now we will sell direct to them.”
R Graebert: Which, as we know, is never the favorite tactic for a reseller. If we were to be realistic, today our major sales are still through OEMs and our subsidiaries.
Grabowski: Do you want to talk about how well your Mac and Linux sales are doing?
R Graebert: It is hard for us to tell, because we don’t sell individually [by operating system] -- we don’t sell an individual Mac or Linux seat. [A single license works for all three operating systems.] We have partners, like Corel, who sell on the Mac app store, but we don’t sell on Apple’s app store at this point.
We saw good usage after some CAD vendors dropped Linux support last year. Mac is pretty steady for us.
Desbordes: Adding BIM functions to the Mac version makes sense, because there are quite a number in the architectural field who use Macs. One thing people like about ARES is that they can mix and match, so we have users that might have Mac and Windows computers, and our license allows you to use whichever platform you want.
R Graebert: I just got the M1-powered MacBook, and ARES ran on it flawlessly. For us, to build our software for ARM [CPUs] is trivial, because we already have that for the mobile versions [which run on ARM CPUs], so there is no downside to us doing it.
I asked our programmers to look into switching all of our cloud apps to run on ARM servers, because they are typically 20-30% cheaper. If the savings is big enough, then we might as well rebuild them.
Grabowski: Do you mean running ARM servers for Kudo and the cloud functions in ARES?
R Graebert: Kudo has multiple services running to make it work: we have services to make thumbnails, data management, load balancing--. We would look at whether an ARM configuration is more economical. We are just taking a look right now.
Everything talks through REST [representational state transfer] APIs, and so it is really easy for us to replace one piece with another; we don't have those hard binary dependencies any more.
[Disclaimer: I write tutorial books about ARES and related software for Graebert.]
And in Other News
LEDAS reports that software development on behalf of customers in additive manufacturing and CAM, and digital medicine made up 60% of their 2020 revenues. The highest growth in 2020 came from the geometric engines it develops for CAD, up 45%. ledas.com/news/871-3d-web-additive-manufacturing-kernels-and-solvers-raised-ledas-earnings-in-2020/
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The 2021x release of CATIA from Dassault Systemes adds the Multidiscipline Automated Drafter, for interactive drafting and batched rule-based automatic generation of drawings specific to marine & offshore, energy & materials, and construction industries.
In generative design, the new Catia offers Generative Functional Tolerancing that automates accurate geometric tolerancing schema. The new Flow Driven Generative Designer allows non-fluid analysis specialists [always a scary thought] to generate optimal duct shapes based on functional specifications. The new Lattice Designer does both conceptual and detailed designs of complex lattice structures.
For more on the new release, check out this PDF: extend.inescrm.com/maxdownload/download.dll/V2021.1-EN.doc
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The LiDAR [Light Detection And Ranging ] camera on iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro (2020) is finding use as mobile 3D scanners, although my understanding is that it will be removed by Apple in future phones. [Update: this prediction was based on a badly-sourced claim.] In the meantime, SiteScape and EveryPoint are iOS scanning apps updated to do direct uploads to Sketchfab.
To celebrate, Sketchfab is holding a street art LiDAR scanning challenge: blog.sketchfab.com/blogs/community/sketchfab-lidar-scanning-challenge-street-art/
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
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Tutorial: Speeding up a solid-state drive
You can subscribe to the WorldCAD Access blog’s RSS feed through Feed Burner at feeds.feedburner.com/WorldcadAccess.
Letters to the Editor
I thought you’d want to know that I just found out that Dave Weisberg passed away last month. He was 83. Don’t know if you know him, but Jack Ring also passed away in April.
- Name withheld by request
The editor replies: Mr Weisberg was a pioneer of the CAD industry, and his obituary is at legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?pid=197263219.
His history on the early years of CAD, "The Engineering Design Revolution: The People, Companies and Computer Systems That Changed Forever the Practice of Engineering," can be read free at cadhistory.net.
Re: Varjo's Third-Gen VR/AR Goggles
Every time I tried to play a video game or use VR [virtual reality], I got such a headache that I can't do it. What's up with that, do you think?
- Chris Cadman
The editor replies: It’s due to all of the issues I listed at the start of the article. Movement involving the eyes is a tricky problem to solve, and game-based VR just isn't up to snuff. Neither were early ones, like the first Oculus. I don't know if high-end VR goggles are any better, as I have not had the opportunity to try a set.
Mr Cadman responds: Interesting! So basically, these VR hackers are screwing up everybody’s brains.
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Do you use VR headsets just for evaluating products or also for your entertainment? I picked through your article, but it's beyond me. Good to see you slugging away. Never give up.
- Name withheld by request
The editor replies: No, I do not use them, as there is no reason to. When I tried VR headsets at trade shows, I found them irritating.
Re: Dynamic Blocks
You may want to tell Jack Foster to have a look at the great Lee Mac’s dynamic block property functions here: lee-mac.com/dynamicblockfunctions.html, such as get/set dynamic block property values, toggle flip states, and get/set dynamic block visibility states.
If Jack needs some example code, I can send him a block and a program to help him get his feet wet. My code is nowhere as polished as Lee’s is but it is much easier to follow.
- Ron Powell
The editor replies: I’ve forwarded your email to Mr Foster. Thank you for the lead!
Notable Quotable
“Apparently, market manipulation is only legal when rich people do it.”
- Robert Reich
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