Issue #1,085 | The Business of CAD | 1 March 2021
by Ralph Grabowski
Never mind the big budgets of companies behind Inventor, NX, or Solidworks. Operating under the radar are a lot of small MCAD systems that are doing just fine. Firms like Ashlar-Vellum, NanoSoft, and VariCAD benefit from hundreds of thousands of users whose allegiance keeps the companies afloat, decade after decade.
Other small MCAD firms, however, wondered about their future viability, and so allowed themselves to be bought up by billionaire firms, such as SpaceClaim by Ansys; Onshape by PTC; and Bricsys by Hexagon (see figure below).
Bricsys is possibly the least MCAD-like of these companies. Its software straddles among broad areas like architectural, civil, mapping, mechanical, sheet metal, and general CAD. The software can be ambidextrous, because it uses AutoCAD’s DWG format as the do-it-all format. This goes against the grain of Autodesk, which deploys a different file format for each of its vertical products. This leaves Autodesk with a Babel Tower-sized translation problem; for Bricsys, no translation is needed between verticals.
A decade ago, Bricsys undertook two moves to help it develop BricsCAD more rapidly. It decoupled itself from the IntelliCAD code on which it was originally sold, and then acquired direct editing and 2D/3D constraints technology from Russia’s LEDAS Group.
Now that it controls the core code, Bricsys can develop technology for one discipline, and then spread it to others. It has a common platform: what works in BIM works in MCAD and civil; what works on Windows works on Linux and Mac.
The BricsCAD Lineup
BricsCAD is sold in several editions. For 2021, the lineup has been rejiggered somewhat (prices shown are for perpetual licenses in US$):
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BricsCAD Shape (free) -- 3D modeler meant to compete against SketchUp
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BricsCAD Lite ($560) -- low-end 2D-only drafting program that includes LISP
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BricsCAD Pro ($960) -- general 2D drafting and direct 3D modeling with 2D/3D parametrics
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BricsCAD Ultimate ($2,000) -- all software listed above and below
Verticals require or include BricsCAD Pro:
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Communicator module ($500; requires Pro) -- MCAD file translator
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BricsCAD Mechanical module ($1,700; includes Pro) -- assemblies, automatic BOMs, and sheet metal design
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BricsCAD BIM module ($1,800; includes Pro) -- architectural modeling
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Civil engineering is currently part of the Pro edition, but I can see it being spun out in a future release.
No CAD vendor is complete today without at least some kind of cloud offering, and so here is what Bricsys offers in that area:
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Bricsys 24/7 -- separate subscription-based online collaboration
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BricsCAD Cloud -- online drawing access inside BricsCAD; available only with a subscription
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Bricsys Collective -- online store of third-party add-ons, of which I count 350
How BricsCAD Mechanical Works
BricsCAD is a direct modeler. This means you do not start 3D modeling with traditional 2D sketches or work with a history tree. Instead, BricsCAD is like SpaceClaim in which you push and pull faces of 3D primitives and apply 2D and 3D constraints. As well, you can extrude/revolve/etc 2D and 3D entities; and import 3D files from other systems which BricsCAD converts to constrained models.
As all drawings are stored in DWG format, Bricsys had to come up with some workarounds. For example, when creating assemblies, BricsCAD attaches parts as xrefs, then connects them with 3D constraints. Some types of data are read and stored in proprietary formats, such as point clouds in BPT (Bricsys Point Tree) files.
Bricsys says its software uses AI [artificial intelligence], but I suggest that its technique instead involves large-scale search and replace of the DWG database.
For instance, the Blockify command finds all identical instances of groups of entities within a fudge factor, and converts them to blocks.
The Optimize command looks for slightly angled lines with gaps, and then straightens and joins them.
The Propagate command searches for likely elements like joints and then adds connections (see figure below).
What’s New in BricsCAD Mechanical V21
The last few releases of BricsCAD involved it getting a base set of mechanical functions, and so V21 fine-tunes it. Fillets can have variable-radius curves and chamfers can have multi-angle cuts; both can be edited interactively.
Once threads are drawn on cylinders and cones (bolts), they are represented in drawing views according a specified standard.
Sub-d [sub-division] meshes are brought up-to-date with variable smoothness levels (0= none, 5 = max); editing of mesh faces, edges, and vertices; and conversion to solids. Related to this, when a model is imported from SketchUp, its mesh objects are converted to blocks for easier handling; even the materials are imported for re-use in BricsCAD.
For about half the price of AutoCAD, BricsCAD includes 3D constraints. As of v21, you can place 3D constraints at the vertices and segments of 3D polylines, and use 3D angle and radius constraints with blocks. Any geometry with 3D constraints and parameters is now automatically treated as geometry-driven.
BricsCAD has “parametric blocks,” which like AutoCAD’s dynamic blocks (which use 2D constraints), except that in BricsCAD they can also use 3D constraints. A new command converts selected geometry to parametric blocks so that we don’t have to figure out how to do it.
To show off the capabilities of the very first BricsCAD Mechanical, sheet metal was the very first enhancement. In V21, new sheetmetal functions include tabs along curves, per-body thickness, and zero-radius bends. Like other MCAD vendors, BricsCAD V21 converts solid models to unfolded sheet metal parts (see figure below).
New in V21 is piping, along with a library of 200 parametric pipe parts. Connections are made automatically between pipe parts so that when you move a T or a pipe, all connected parts stretch and move along with it. The new MoveGuided command moves entities along guide curves to automatically align blocks to geometry.
Bricsys is working on the problem of converting point clouds to geometry, like some other CAD vendors. New commands in V21 fit lines to flat projections, and planes to planar parts of point clouds. Point clouds in drawings can be clipped and exported to PTS files. The Bubble Viewer navigator colorizes point clouds according to their x,y,z orientation in space (see figure below).
The output from 3D models often is a set of 2D drawings. The new Drawing Customizations panel lets you define color coding for areas and automatic tag placement for parts. Very long objects can be shortened with the ViewBreak command.
A new Animation Editor animates exploded views in model space.
Drawings can be exported in MicroStation DGN and 3D PDF formats, as well as imported as entities from Revit drawings in RVT and RFA formats.
History is recorded individually for every entity, allowing per-entity undoes and redoes.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Bricsys is a small CAD company that produces an astonishing number of new features each year, putting large CAD vendors to shame. The company has traditionally been shy about revealing the number of customers, but based on hints I think it might be about 300,000.
In its early years, Bricsys wandered about in a search to distinguish itself from the thirty-plus other AutoCAD clones.
The CEO at the time was an architect by profession, and so it came as a surprise to me that the first in-house vertical Bricsys produced was mechanical software and, more specifically, in the niche of sheet metal design. There is, however, a simple reason for the apparent contradiction: MCAD is much easier to implement than BIM.
Once Bricsys figured out the mechanical side of things, it applied the know-how to the architectural side. Using the “universal” DWG file format has allowed the company to demo a mechanical plant inside a building set upon a 3D topographical site.
While not as mature as industry-stalwart Solidworks, BricsCAD Mechanical is worth a look for its modern roots and modest pricing. What BricsCAD Mechanical lacks is a strong connection to CAM [computer-aided manufacturing] or links to simulation software. This puzzles me, as Bricsys owner Hexagon possesses a half-dozen CAM and simulation packages. In two years following the acquisition, the only linkage is with point clouds using Hexagon-owned Leica Geosystems. Maybe next year.
Bricsys released BricsCAD V21 last October. A 30-day trial is for BricsCAD Ultimate and includes the Shape modeler.
[This article first appears in Design Engineering magazine, and is reprinted with permission.]
And in Other News
Dassault Systemes reports Q4 revenues of €1.22 billion (approx US$1.5), up 3% over a year ago. CAD software revenues were each up 1%:
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Catia €295 million
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Solidworks €235 million
Total revenues for 2020 were €4.45 billion, up 11%. The company predicts €4.74 billion (US$5.6 billion) for 2021.
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Xencelabs (pronounced “sense labs”) is a new company of ex-Wacom people with a new product: the 8mm-thick Pen Tablet (US$280) is meant to match the feeling of drawing by hand. It comes with two pens (with two and three buttons) and an optional button box.
The QuickKeys box (brings the price to $360) has eight buttons with a dial controller to arrive at 40 shortcuts per program, with an OLED screen displaying the command assignment of each button. https://xencelabs.ndvr.site
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Hexagon has recreated its REcreate software that turns point-cloud scans of objects (such as from Hexagon’s portable arms) into manufacturable products as STL output.
It imports any CAD model and turns point cloud data into CAD models (via a “fully featured CAD tool suite”) and 2D engineering drawings. The analysis tools interrogate and validate 3D models for subtractive and additive manufacturing. https://www.hexagonmi.com/REcreate
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Revenue-wise, Hexagon AB reported 2020 revenues of €3.77 billion (roughly US$4.6 billion), down 4% from the year before. CAD software is part of the Manufacturing Intelligence division, of which the ceo said, “MSC, Bricsys, and our mining software portfolio [are doing very well].”
Monica Schnitger has the details for you at schnitgercorp.com/?p=17742
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Here are a post that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
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Letters to the Editor
Re: Readers React
I guess they did!
- Chris Cadman
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I think you are being very generous in saying that there are a dozen new/improved functions each year. Maybe two or three that each user will actually benefit from. And it’s been this way for several years.
I used to hate it that Heidi had to work so hard to make it seem like a new release actually had anything worth spending the time on to upgrade.
Don't print my name. I like to stay on the inside.
- Name withheld by request
Re: Worst hardware design ever
Back in the one-stop-shopping turnkey-CAD-system VAR [value-added reseller] world, I'd set up my share of Calcomp, HI [Houston Instruments], and these very same HP plotters.
It was not far from my personal vision of purgatory. You're right, the HPs were a better design, but not without their flaws -- how a pen could be knocked out of its carousel and fall down the legs, requiring disassembly to retrieve, was a favorite.
Setting up the software to center the plot in such a way so no border edges would be clipped was a sort of black art. It was a case of the tail wagging the dog as frequently the user's border would have to be resized from industry standard due to the space needed by the rollers. Thanks for the wonderful memories (kidding)!
- Sam Hochberg
Notable Quotable
“It’s been two weeks since I left [after seven years at] Google and I keep getting asked, ‘Why did I leave now?’ I think the better question is, ‘Why did I stay for so long?’”
- Noam Bardin, former ceo, Waze
paygo.media/p/25171
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