Autodesk, Nemetschek Agree on Greater Interoperability for Design and Construction Software

Design tools such as Revit, ArchiCAD will have easier data exchange under new agreement

Both companies say the Interoperability agreement is a big step toward optimizing their customers’ workflows and helping them generate better project outcomes.

Rendering courtesy of Autodesk

Autodesk Inc. agreed to an interoperability agreement with the Nemetschek Group April 24 to improve open collaboration and efficiency for both companies' architecture, engineering, construction and operations tools, as well as their media and entertainment products. The agreement will improve existing interoperability, such as application program interfaces, between the two companies’ industry cloud and desktop products and improve the exchange of information across their various software suites, according to the agreement.

"Maturity of the companies, the capabilities of [design] today thanks to the cloud and simply what we owe our customers: that's what's driving this interoperability agreement," says Marc Nézet, chief strategy officer at Nemetschek Group, which owns and produces design and construction tools such as Graphisoft's ArchiCAD and Bluebeam Cloud.

Optimizing design and construction workflows across Autodesk and Nemetschek's products, particularly their cloud products, will allow data to flow from application to another, both companies said. That interoperability will be powered by Autodesk Platform Services (APS), a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services, that can enable Nemetschek’s dTwin, Bluebeam Cloud, BIMcloud, and BIMplus to connect to Autodesk's industry clouds—Forma, Fusion, and Flow—and design products such as Revit.

"And a lot of our customers spend a lot of time trying to connect tools and data," says Nicolas Mangon, Autodesk vice president of AEC strategy. "So, to Marc's point, we need to help them streamline their processes, so they can focus on delivering projects, and that was a big driver for working together to solve these problems."

The interoperability agreement will allow integration along open industry standards such as openBIM by the buildingSMART Alliance. Under the terms of the agreement, Autodesk and Nemetschek Group will provide mutual access to their APIs and industry clouds, thereby giving developers access to Autodesk tools including AutoCAD, Revit, 3ds Max and Maya, as well as Autodesk Forma and Autodesk Construction Cloud, similarly access will be provided to Nemetschek solutions including Allplan, ArchiCAD, Bluebeam, Maxon One, Vectorworks as well as Nemetschek’s relevant cloud platforms. The two companies said they will improve upon existing data exchanges and open new data-centric workflows that span disciplines and industries together.

Both companies said they have a list of bugs and issues to work with submitted by customers that use both and that'll be a starting point for building better workflows.

"Given our portfolio, we are still learning because we've been more on the on the competing side," Mangon says. "We're leaning what's synergy and what's competition? So, we'll have to see how what kind of offerings work together."

ENR Midwest Editor and Associate Technology Editor Jeff Yoders has been writing about design and construction innovations for 16 years. He is a two-time Jesse H. Neal award winner and multiple ASBPE winner for his tech coverage. Jeff previously launched Building Design + Construction's building information modeling blog and wrote a geographic information systems column at CE News. He also wrote about materials prices, construction procurement and estimation for MetalMiner.com. He lives in Chicago, the birthplace of the skyscraper, where the pace of innovation never leaves him without a story to chase.

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