Graebert History

The hidden story of the company that pioneered

innovation in CAD from the early days of the DWG format to the SaaS revolution

Graebert GmbH of Berlin has been a pioneer, an innovator, and a leader in design and engineering automation since its
founding in 1977. The innovation continues in the 21st Century as Graebert brings the DWG data format into the Software
as a Service (SaaS) revolution. Graebert remains a family-owned business dedicated to its core values of customer
service and innovation.

Pioneering the distribution of AutoCAD in Germany

Graebert began as an IBM® consultant and systems house,
working on both software and hardware development for its
clients and customers. In 1982 it developed the first computer-
aided design (CAD) application for IBM mid-range systems. The
software automated the production of technical drawings used
to manufacture garage doors for commercial buildings.
A year later, CAD became a much larger focus for Graebert.
It became one of Germany’s first resellers of the IBM PC, and
it signed a three-year exclusive contract to distribute Autodesk
AutoCAD in Germany. At the time Autodesk was one of several
®
competing small companies offering CAD software for the
new PC. These strategies helped separate Autodesk from its
competition in the early days of PC CAD.
exclusively by Graebert. A bundle of AutoCAD and several
Graebert add-ons, dubbed “Autopack™,” proved popular, and
Graebert’s share of the German AutoCAD market reached 70%
by 1993.
»The strategy worked, as we could differentiate from
competitors,« remembers Wilfried Graebert. As well as helping
Graebert realize there were unmet opportunities in CAD
software. Others were creating add-in products for AutoCAD,but
there was little standardization from one product to the next.
Graebert chose to redesign its products by creating a unified
User Interface (UI) so that all Graebert apps looked and
operated alike. »With this development, training was much easier
and cross-application use was possible,« notes Wilfried Graebert.

The California-based company was aggressive in signing

international distribution contracts; it liberally distributed
free copies into education; and it made AutoCAD extensible
programmable so others could write add-on products for it.
Graebert used its unusual status as a CAD reseller, a PC
reseller, and a CAD software developer to take a leadership
position in German speaking Europe. Founder Wilfried Graebert
put together a roadshow for Central Europe to introduce both
AutoCAD and the IBM PC. It was a smashing success, selling
more than 1,000 AutoCAD licenses and signing on more than
30 new resellers.

CAD was immediately popular around the globe. The result was
a chaotic business environment. Vendors, resellers, and regional
distributors came and went. Companies were partners one
day and suing each other the next. Graebert’s analysis of the
changes in this new market led the company to increase its
work in software development. Graebert published what it called
“The Red Bible,” a catalog of specific add-on CAD applications
for architecture, mechanical design, electrical design, PCB
design, and others. Some of these were from small software
shops, some were created in-house by Graebert. All were
distributed
Some vendors who were selling through Graebert’s Red Bible
did not want to change their UI to match the Graebert design, so
over time Graebert replaced those applications with their own
products. When the transition was complete, Graebert offered
13 applications which became quite popular with industrial
clients. Companies including Siemens, AEG, Porsche, and BMW
bought hundreds — sometimes thousands — of copies because
of the multiple add-on applications and simplified training.
The first alternative to AutoCAD
In 1993 Autodesk decided to unilaterally terminate the distri-
bution agreement of Graebert. This decision can be explained
by Graebert‘s growing domination on the German market at this
time, reaching a 70% market share of the AutoCAD sales.
Graebert realized it needed to move to a different CAD engine,
replacing AutoCAD. A month-long search revealed no suitable
replacement; the CAD industry was in a period of consolidation.
So the company decided it would become a primary CAD
developer.
The Graebert software development team was divided into two
groups. One focused on the existing Autopack applications. The
other created what became known as FelixCAD™, a core CAD
engine designed to support files created in AutoCAD DWG format
and capable of running third-party applications. The first release
of FelixCAD in 1995 was 100% written in-house, including the
code to read/write DWG files. Because of German copyright law,
FelixCAD was a “workalike” not a “lookalike” — a difference that
would become more important over time.
The first mobile CAD solution
The dawn of the 21st Century brought new opportunities to the CAD industry, with Graebert
continuing to pioneer new business processes and CAD applications.
In 2000, Microsoft introduced Windows® CE, an operating
system designed to support a new generation of handheld
computers.
Graebert became the first CAD developer to support Windows
CE on Pocket PC devices, using a variant of FelixCAD it named
CeCAD™, later renamed PowerCAD CE™ when Graebert
renamed FelixCAD as PowerCAD™.
In 2004 Graebert released a product that led to an entire line of
products and services for the real estate management indus-
try. SiteMaster™ Building ran on the PowerCAD CE mobile CAD
technology as a basis for a building survey product.
SiteMaster Building simplified the tedious process of measuring
dimensions and taking inventory of existing structures by auto-
mating the design of floorplans from measurements taken with
laser handheld devices.
FelixCAD made its debut at CEBIT, the world-renowned
industrial trade show. Graebert promoted it as the world’s first
true alternative to AutoCAD for developers. Partner deals were
established at CEBIT with companies in Korea, Japan, USA, and
more. Graebert continued its development of FelixCAD, gaining
new partnerships every year.
The CAD business continued to be tumultuous in the late
1990s. A lawsuit filed by a CAD developer in the USA caught
the attention of US government antitrust authorities. Over the
next few years, a reshuffling of the CAD industry took place.
A software product called Marcomp, designed to make CAD
programs compatible with AutoCAD DWG, became owned by an
industry consortium known today as the Open Design Alliance
(ODA). Graebert was a founding member in 1998. The ODA
provides its members with a standard solution for .dwg
interoperability and its SDK is used by thousands of applications.
Release 6.0
User Guide
Last Revision - September, 2005
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CeCAD won the gold medal of innovation at Batimat in 2001.
It was running on Pocket PC devices.
The second-largest installed base for DWG-editing CAD software
In 2010 Graebert introduced a completely updated version of its DWG-compatible, general-purpose CAD software as
ARES® Commander. It was the first CAD software to be simultaneously available on Windows®, macOS®,
and Linux® operating systems.

Additionally, ARES Commander became the underlying CAD

engine for new products created with leading software part-
ners. The best known include Dassault Systèmes® DraftSight®
and Corel® Corporation CorelCAD™. This strategy proved to
be successful and helped Graebert to reach a total installed
base of several millions of users, the second leading source of
DWG-based drafting technology in the world after Autodesk.

The decade of the 2010s was a time of growth and diversity for
Graebert. The SiteMaster line was extended with SiteMaster
BIM, a 2D/3D solution for building surveys that support both
DWG and IFC, the leading common data standard for Building
Information Modeling. The year 2015 saw the release of
ARES Touch for Android®, the first full-featured mobile ARES Touch was extended to the Apple iOS®
CAD solution for smartphones and tablets. environment in 2016.

Leading the SaaS transformation in the CAD industry

Graebert keeps growing as a global leader in the CAD
industry, with activities in more than 100 countries. It maintains
three research and development centers in Germany, Russia,
and India, and operates two fully-owned subsidiary companies in
Japan and India. Three of the top five construction companies in
Japan have standardized on ARES CAD Software.
In 2016 Graebert announced its innovation roadmap,
the “Trinity of CAD Software”.
Today Graebert offers three fully functional and
interrelated CAD products:
ARES Commander for desktop
When ARES Kudo™ was first released in 2017-2018 it (Windows, macOS and Linux computers);
became the first web-native CAD solution capable of
both reading and editing DWG drawings online. ARES Touch for Android and iOS
smartphones and tablets;

ARES Kudo for browser-based CAD.

CAD vendors should no longer wait to migrate their solutions

to the Cloud but they should also keep in mind that it will most
likely take more than 10 years before the number of Cloud users
would outreach the number of traditional on-premise users.

The challenge our industry is facing for the coming years will
therefore be to maintain in parallel products for desktop and
cloud. The most successful companies will be the ones to
manage the complexity of such a hybrid ecosystem to conduct
smooth transformations.

Graebert ambitions to facilitate this journey for both CAD

vendors and end-users with its unique Trinity concept.

The current ARES Trinity of CAD leads the industry in the race
to bring Software as a Service (SaaS) to the CAD industry, a
transition in its infancy.

A 2019 white paper written by independent industry expert

Ralph Grabowski claims ARES Kudo is the superior choice for
LEARN MORE
www.graebert.com/cad-software/ares-kudo/compare-ares-kudo-to-autocad-web/
DWG-based Cloud CAD over other existing alternatives.

Cloud is reshaping the CAD industry

Drawings needed more than ever

The leader in Cloud CAD for 3D mechanical design, PTC
Onshape®, uses Graebert technology for its drafting features
since 2015. More recently, Dassault Systèmes, the World leader
in 3D Design & Engineering Software, announced the upcoming
release of DraftSight Cloud, powered by Graebert’s ARES Kudo
technology.
There is a global renaissance regarding 2D
drafting taking place; companies which once said
»3D models and only 3D models« now realize drawings are as
important to engineering and construction as models.

ARES®, ARES Commander™, ARES Touch™, ARES Kudo™, ARES Map™, ARES Mechanical™, ARES Sketch™ Order Desk +49 (0) 30 896 903 89
and SiteMaster™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Graebert GmbH. All other trademarks and sales@graebert.com
registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. Copyright 2019 Graebert GmbH.
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