Bengaluru, India
As a company, Bricsys has always believed in delivering choice to its users: a message that CEO Mr. Erik de Keyser has been repeating loud and clear at all trade-shows and forums. In terms of operating system, it is reflected in the 3 platforms that BricsCAD runs on - Windows, Linux & Mac.
Way back in 2008, I met Erik and his team for the first time at their HQ Ghent: those were the days of BricsCAD V8, still running (some) IntelliCAD code, and I was told they were re-building BricsCAD ground-up using their own (re-written) neutral-OS-code, which would one day run on Linux (and, as we now know, Apple too). Linux has been and is a feverishly passionate platform for many in Europe but at that time, it sounded not-very-interesting for me from an India standpoint. I was, after all, at Belgium to sign up as a Bricsys developer and reseller for India, and the Linux ambitions and code-rewrite was nothing more than academic interest to me.
CADPower V18 beta, running in Linux Mint Cinnamon 17
Two years later, in 2010, Bricsys released BricsCAD for Linux, and in 2015, the fruits of the one-code-multiple-OS became more evident with the release of the Mac version of BricsCAD. Although there were clearly no big $$ earned, Bricsys kept investing in the Linux and Mac development and those versions saw the light of the day, and continue to be maintained. This was a smart strategic move, made business sense. By a very conscious decision, Bricsys stayed away from mobile platforms unlike CAD vendors like ZWSoft, GstarCAD and Graebert who rushed & released small screen versions of their desktop CAD, some as native apps, others browser based. I am yet to see a single user who has paid for DWG CAD on the mobile platform. Those who got it free from their vendors rarely use it. And, in any way, ODA is on a parallel fast-track to bring DWG (including rendering and 3D) on browsers (including mobile) and this is likely to open up several new third-party options for DWG on mobiles, and probably better and more stabler than what others have already done.
Betting on all desktop OSes is a calculated gamble for Bricsys, much like the other vendors who betted on the mobile platforms. Neither Bricsys nor the other vendors have realized a Return-On-Investment (yet) on the resources that have gone into their non-Windows foray. The neutral-OS code ensured that Bricsys released full-blown versions of BricsCAD on Linux and Mac, and not watered-down lite versions like Autodesk did.
On our part, we are in line with the Bricsys thinking and have been investing in porting our GeoTools & CADPower to Linux and Mac.
The BricsCAD+ menu in CADPower V18 beta, running in Linux Mint Cinnamon 17
Last week, I installed Linux Mint 17 Quiana on one of my old laptops and was pleasantly surprised to see both the OS as well as BricsCAD working pretty well. In 2017, we won two clients who are using BricsCAD Linux version across their organization. Another of our first BIM customers in India (a startup architectural firm in Bengaluru) is using BricsCAD on the Mac. Yet another multi-license user of BricsCAD in Mumbai is a hard-core BricsCAD Mac user. The non-Windows brigade is finally arriving, if not already there, and taking notice of BricsCAD.
(Top & Bottom) CADPower on the Mac, one of the few BricscAD add-ons for the Mac
I am bullish about the future (usability-wise) of BricsCAD on non-Windows OSes, be it Linux or Mac. Our add-on software, GeoTools and CAPower already run on the Mac OS, and the Linux version is close to release. My reading is that these have the potential to grow faster in the coming years than the pace so far. Linux is free, running an office suite on Linux also does not cost anything. The Mac & Windows PC price gap is narrowing. All this is good augury for the non-Windows bandwagon. My advice to Bricsys sales points, prospects and customers is this: give it a try. BricsCAD on Linux is not just a great value proposition (cuts your per-seat cost by 50%) but is implementable as well. Users can migrate and learn with minimal adjustment issues.
Like me, if you had a mind block about trying .dwg CAD on a non-Windows PC, now is the time to change. Contact us to know more about how to setup, use and deploy BricsCAD on a Linux or Mac.
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