The Takeaway
Hexagon sells a top design tool in the Process and Power Plant Space. Bricsys gave them an alternative to AutoCAD as a CAD engine two years ago; now Hexagon owns Bricsys. This gives a level of legitimacy that tiny Bricsys could never achieve by itself.
The Details
Hexagon AB, a global software conglomerate specializing in infrastructure and related design technologies, has acquired Bricsys, a small but mature developer of CAD software based on the .dwg file format popularized by Autodesk’s AutoCAD. The news was announced at the opening of the Bricsys annual Developers Conference in London.
The Bricsys CAD platform, BricsCAD, supports 2D/3D general, mechanical, and sheet metal design and building information modeling (BIM) in one system, all using the .dwg file standard. In recent years Bricsys has added artificial intelligence utilities to assist users in conceptual modeling and related BIM workflows.
Demonstration of BricsCAD BIM at the annual Bricsys Developers Conference in London.
The deal closed today. Bricsys will become part of the Hexagon PPM division, originally created with the purchase of Intergraph Plant and Power. Autodesk and Intergraph were direct competitors in the 1980s in the early years of the CAD business. This deal gives tiny Bricsys (2017 revenue apx. 13 million euros) a new owner twice the size of Autodesk (2071 revenue apx. $2 billion). The purchase price was not announced; we estimate it was between $35 million and $50 million.
Consilia Vektor comments
There is considerable unrest in the Autodesk user community over licensing requirements and the nature of required product portfolios. Outside North America, design companies have been more receptive of BricsCAD as an AutoCAD alternative. More than 1,000 third-party developers have sprung up in recent years, providing niche products for small markets. Now that one of those third-party developers owns Bricsys, the markets won’t be so small any more.
This deal gives Hexagon a complete portfolio for the AEC market, with conceptual design, CAD design, BIM software and collaboration tools, project and cost controls, in-field construction execution tools (work packages), and progress documentation (reality capture). Bricsys will undoubtedly draw from the vast Hexagon portfolio beyond the PPM division over time.
This acquisition is one more proof that drafting (2D) is never going away. It remains a valuable and viable part of the infrastructure engineering workflow, even as the company incorporates more 3D workflow into the basic product.